#BUT THE MAIN THAT PEOPLE KNOW ME ON IS SACRED

[azelsdoormat]

Azel Radwan Main Story

► Chapter 0

This translation is fanmade and strictly for entertainment purposes only. All media and original content belong to Cybird. Do not use, claim as your own, repost or reupload onto other platforms, reblogs are welcome.

Content Warning: mentions of child abuse, graphic descriptions of violence, gore?, generally disturbing content.

True love — to me, is the most evil of curses that must never befall me.

…

Azel: High Priest… please… stop

The whip tore into human flesh, and the blood-curdling screams of my beloved brothers rang through the air.

The cold, hard floor was stained bright red with the blood dripping from their torn fingernails. It was an image burned into those so-called “divine eyes” that would never fade. 

The grotesque sight, as horrifying as every nightmare in the world combined, unfolded before my eyes.

And I, this powerless god, could do nothing but scream and cry until my voice went hoarse. 

Azel: I beg of you. I’ll do anything you say. 

Azel: It’s all my fault for being a bad boy, it’s my fault for not behaving well. 

Azel: Please stop. I promise I won’t run away again. 

Azel: Please, I beg of you, please, please, I beg… 

I clung pathetically to the High Priest’s robes, desperately repeating my pleas.

While people revere me as a god, the reality was far from that. 

High Priest: Your Holiness… I sincerely apologise. I have no desire to cause you harm. 

The High Priest stroked my head with pity, smiling tenderly. 

In the middle of that nightmarish scene, he was the only source of kindness. 

High Priest: This, too, is love.

Azel: … Love?

High Priest: You are an extraordinary being, Your Holiness. If anything were to happen to you, it would be too late.

High Priest: To ensure that no mishaps occur to your sacred body, I must mete out severe disciplinary actions as such. 

High Priest: This is all for your sake. Please understand. 

The whip was swung once more.

My brothers, hung from the ceiling, gradually lost the light in their eyes and were reduced to nothing but mere empty shells. 

If this is what people call “love”— then I despise this monstrosity with every fiber of my being. 

Azel: … I… understand…

Azel: I understand, so… stop it already.

Azel: I’ll listen to everything you say.

Azel: I’ll work hard, I’ll become a proper god.

Azel: … Please… 

…

<< Fast Forward Many Years Later >>

Matias: Have you two heard about the romance novel that's become popular in Rhodolite lately?

The princes of three countries held regular meetings in different locations, and they would occasionally stray into idle chatter. 

The topics varied, but today, of all things we could possibly talk about, it had to be the one topic I didn't want to hear about the most. 

Kagari: Don't know.

Azel: I have no interest in such items. 

Matias: I can lend you my copy of the book. 

Azel: Please only offer it to Kagari. 

Kagari: No way. Matias is impossible to handle when it comes to these topics. 

Azel: Unfortunately, I am deathly allergic to anything related to romance. 

Matias: Is there such a thing?

Azel: Yes, and therefore—

Matias: Then I’ll read it aloud for you. 

(... This hell just became even hotter. Someone spare me.) 

Matias didn't look like he was about to back down any time soon and placed the book on the table.

The book’s design was boring and unremarkable. 

Matias: This book is so detailed in depicting the process of love developing, it’s known as a bible for beginners to romance.

Matias: I’ve read through it myself, and it’s truly a treasure trove of information.

Matias: Take the first date scene on page 32 for instance. According to this bible—...

Ignoring Matias’ rambling, I pulled the book toward me and haphazardly flipped through the pages. 

(Ugh… what is this nonsense?)

As expected of something that received such high praise from Matias, the contents of the book were revoltingly vivid portrayals of romance. 

Most of the story was filled with unnecessary trivial chattering between lovestruck men and women. 

Kagari: So you lied about being allergic.

Azel: It was not a lie. Please have a look at these goosebumps on my skin. 

Kagari: Looks like the real deal.

Azel: While Matias yearns for romance, I am the complete opposite.

Azel: Merely hearing the words “love” and “romance” gives me the chills. 

I recalled the day “love” was defined to me with a merciful smile. 

Even now, seeing that word made me sick to the stomach. The very thought fills me with so much disgust, I felt dizzy. 

(Apart from that hag, there were plenty of other people who preached about love with equally ridiculous reasoning.) 

(I can never understand how Matias can so purely believe in love…)

Matias: You’re weird. Is there really anyone who hates being loved?

Azel: Perhaps it is because I am a god and different from ordinary mortals. 

Azel: … At the very least, I neither want to love nor be loved.

Azel: I’ve learned firsthand that love is nothing but misery.

I shut the book and shoved it back at Matias.

I knew without a doubt that I never wanted to open a book of that genre ever again.

Matias: No need to return it. This book is my gift to you.

Azel: No, thank you. I refuse.

Matias: Don’t say that. While you may despise love and romance now, your thinking could change someday.

Matias: You could meet your ideal queen in the middle of a scorching desert where she’s on the verge of collapsing, and after you nurse her back to health— 

Azel: Matias, back to reality, please. 

Matias: Ahem. Anyway, it won't hurt to have the beginner’s bible with you. 

Matias: It covers everything from how to invite someone on a date to spending the night together. Study it well. 

I glared at the book Matias pushed back at me.

(Arguing any further is too much of a hassle.)

(Whatever. I’ll simply not open it ever.) 

(Or maybe… I could sell it to Akatsuki instead.)

(I’ve had more than enough of being loved.)

…

(... Hm?)

I suddenly regained consciousness and found myself in an unfamiliar setting.

(Is this a rose garden? It looks rather neglected, though.)

The feeling of entering “another person’s dream” was one I had experienced countless times before.

While I didn't remember every instance clearly, I was certain I had never experienced entering the dreams of someone who owned a rose garden. 

(This isn’t a dream someone who lives in the desert would have.) 

At the junction where several paths intersected, was an oak table with a single book on it. 

I casually picked it up and read through the contents, the owner of the dream’s life story started flowing through my mind.

The story was incomplete, but the owner’s “wish” was clear.

Azel: I see, I see…

Azel: How utterly laughable. 

(A strong yearning for love… they belong to the same category of people as Matias.) 

Someone approached me.

I shifted my gaze to the side and saw an unfamiliar woman standing there. 

???: What’s… laughable?

Azel: I have some unfortunate news for you, who yearns for love and thirsts for knowledge of what it is.

Azel: Love is not the grand blessing it is often proclaimed to be. 

Azel: Sometimes, it would serve you well to remain ignorant and pure for your entire life. You would find far greater happiness that way.

(Not that I intend to force my beliefs onto others…) 

The woman looked like a personification of virtue, and someone who would fall prey to the first con artist she encountered.

It was because of that first impression that, for once, God chose to be merciful.

Azel: I have witnessed many examples of “love”. Not in fiction… but rather the raw, unvarnished love that exists in reality.

Azel: Far too often, people use “love” as a means to justify their otherwise unjustifiable actions.

Azel: It is truly tragic to see people driven mad by love.

Azel: Even the most rational people become unable to live without it.

Azel: Like a curse. 

(There's a chance that this woman, who knows nothing about love now, will become a changed person once she experiences it.) 

(... I can only hope that doesn't happen to her.)

May that ugly curse called “love” never turn her into a beast—

This powerless god could do nothing else but pray for her, just like I did on that one fateful day. 

[aishangotome]

Azel Radwan: Chapter 6

Chapter 5

Thank you @shatcey for providing the video for this chapter!

♡———♡

Under the pressure of the Living God, Izzet quickly retreats.

I also feel the intimidating aura, as if we had incurred the wrath of the God—

To shake off the unfathomable fear I felt for a moment, I also set out for the town with the errand memo in hand.

-

(I… I can't move another step from here.)

The desert is dyed golden, and the light begins to weaken as the day draws to a close.

The setting sun peeking through the huge window is a breathtaking sight, one I could gaze at forever.

(I have to hurry back or I'll end up walking through the desert at night, and I need to push myself a little harder…)

(...I might be getting sleepy…)

(I'm too tired…)

Azel: You're in the way.

A merciless voice rains down on me as I doze off, sitting on the stairs.

Looking up, I see the God, devoid of any compassion, looking down at me.

Emma: …I'm sitting in the corner.

Azel: This isn't a resting place.

Emma: Is there any other room I'm allowed to enter?

Azel: No.

Emma: Then there's nothing I can do about it, is there?

Azel: There is. Get back to the castle quickly.

Azel: How can you even think of sleeping in someone's doorway?

Emma: That's how tired I am. Thanks to a certain God who overworks people.

(I made two round trips between the town and the temple today, so my legs are killing me.)

Azel: Poor you. I look forward to working with you tomorrow as well.

(This person… no, this God, doesn't know the meaning of kindness, does he?)

The Living God sits down one step above me and rests his chin on his knee.

His face, bathed in the setting sun, is irritatingly beautiful and divine, with no hint of the darkness within.

(...It's no wonder everyone is deceived.)

(I wonder what happened to turn him into such a merciless, evil God.)

Azel: … Sigh…

Emma: Why are you sighing?

Azel: I was thinking he came sooner than expected.

Azel: That crazy old geezer must be very interested in you.

(What's he talking about?)

Azel gestures toward the entrance with his chin.

I force my sleepy head to turn and see a person standing in the red sunset.

???: Living God, thank you for allowing me to enter this sacred domain.

My eyes, now accustomed to the light, see an elderly man.

A gentle smile graces his face, the kind that calms the heart of anyone he meets, and he exudes a kind and compassionate aura.

(He has the same atmosphere as Azel when he's playing the role of a God in public.)

Azel: I didn't allow it, but you have business with Emma?

(Could this be the High Priest!?)

As I hurriedly try to stand up, Azel grabs my shoulder and pushes me back down.

Azel: Please be brief. We're in the middle of something right now.

High Priest: My apologies for interrupting your conversation.

(There's a bit of a bite to his words… I wonder if Azel doesn't like the High Priest.)

The High Priest is unfazed by Azel's haughty attitude, and his compassionate gaze turns towards me.

High Priest: Lady Emma, it is a pleasure to meet you. I came to greet you after hearing the rumors.

High Priest: I am one of the God's messengers, bestowed with the important role of High Priest, and currently serve as the administrator of the sanctuary.

High Priest: It is my duty to spread the glory of the Living God throughout the country. I look forward to a long and prosperous relationship.

Emma: …Thank you for your greeting. Please forgive me for speaking to you in this position.

High Priest: Not at all. The Living God's wishes should be respected above all else. Please remain as you are.

(What is this feeling?)

(His words, attitude, and demeanor are all soft, yet it makes my heart uneasy…)

I sense an inexplicable discomfort within his gentle gaze, and I'm at a loss for words.

Azel: I said, "Be brief," didn't I?

But with Azel's interruption, I'm freed from the High Priest's entwining gaze, and I secretly let out a sigh of relief.

High Priest: Then, if you'll permit me, I'll get to the main point.

High Priest: Living God, in light of this recent matter, we are urgently preparing the harem.

(Harem… What!? )

High Priest: We can have Lady Emma move to her chambers immediately.

Azel: No, thank you. Please don't do anything unnecessary.

The highest authority in Tanzanite expresses his disapproval bluntly.

That was my only salvation.

Azel: I've said it many times, I don't need a harem. Didn't I give it to Enis?

High Priest: Enis is merely the administrator. Our country's harem originally belongs to the Living God.

High Priest: Recently, many false divinators have appeared in the city, causing concern among the people.

High Priest: The Living God's favor towards a woman could be a ray of hope to dispel the anxieties of the desert.

Azel: It couldn't. It's just a change of subject.

Azel: Instead of thinking about deceiving the people, why not investigate the cause of the increase in false oracles?

While letting out those barbed words, Azel twirls his fingers in my hair.

When our eyes meet, he gives me a chillingly affectionate smile. If someone who didn't know the situation saw us, they might really think I'm being favored.

(...I'm sure my face is stiff right now.)

This is not the face I want to show the High Priest, so I reluctantly meet Azel's gaze.

Azel: Oh, and also, I've decided that the God's favor will be bestowed on only one person.

Azel: Please don't send any other women my way. They're an eyesore.

The finger that slid from my hair to my cheek lightly presses my skin.

It feels like he's pressuring me to "act," but I don't think I can do anything about my stiff face.

High Priest: To think he favors you so much… I was inconsiderate. It is my fault.

(Oh no, my situation is getting worse and worse…)

High Priest: Lady Emma, may peace be with the Living God's heart.

High Priest: And I sincerely pray that the blessings of the moon be bestowed upon you.

Perhaps Azel's silent pressure of "Go away quickly" got through, as the High Priest bows his head politely and quickly leaves the temple without changing his calm expression.

Emma: What did he mean by the "blessings of the moon" at the end?

Azel: Who knows? Probably the ramblings of a senile old man.

The moment we're alone, the deceptive smile disappears, and Azel's face becomes weary.

(As always, his conman skills—no, his acting skills—are impressive.)

Azel removes his hand from me and looks up at the sky decorating the huge window.

Azel: …The worst way to end the day.

Emma: Do you dislike the High Priest that much?

Azel: It's not just dislike. I never want to see his face again.

Emma: Why…

Azel: Is there anyone who could like an old geezer who keeps sending women my way even though I refuse?

Emma: …That's true.

*flashback to earlier*

Enis: If the precious bloodline of the Living God is cut off, Tanzanite has no future.

Enis: The High Priest will not give up, even if he has to gather all the women in the country.

*flashback over*

(The High Priest is the one who protects the glory of the God, and he may not necessarily respect the Living God's will.)

(Even if they have faith, people don't always act according to the God's wishes.)

(...If even a God has troubles, what's the difference between them and humans?)

Azel: Don't betray me.

Emma: What kind of situation would be considered betrayal?

Azel: It's simple. Don't do anything I dislike.

Emma: I'll try my best.

Azel: That's a good answer.

Emma: I understand better than anyone the pain of being forced to do something I hate.

Emma: In order to build a friendly relationship with the Living God, I want to avoid "unconscious harassment."

As I declare this with a puffed-out chest, Azel, who has shifted his gaze back to me from the sunset, furrows his brow noticeably.

Azel: Build a friendship? I'm an evil God, you know.

Emma: That's true… but I have the experience and wisdom of Belle.

Emma: I know that a person's true nature isn't easily discerned.

During my stay at Rhodolite Castle, there were princes with all sorts of problems: the bloodthirsty prince, the misanthropic prince, the prankster prince, and the prince with a flamboyant love life.

But what I learned from facing them were the values and beliefs that weren't apparent on the surface.

Once I grasped those, the glamor surrounding those noble beasts peeled away, and I could see their true selves.

Based on my experience, the God in front of me must be the same.

The God I see is like a mirage, still far from his true essence.

Emma: Only after knowing their true nature can you see whether you "like" or "dislike" a person...

Emma: No matter how unreasonable the situation, I want to make an effort to understand the Living God.

Azel: …Is that so?

(He's been making a scary face this whole time.)

Emma: Did I say something unpleasant?

Azel: No? It's just that, unlike that idiot, I have no intention of getting along with you.

Azel: I just thought, "What a waste of effort."

He pinches my cheek with his fingers and pulls it.

Emma: I unnershtand you have no intenshun of gettin' along wiff me!

Azel: I have no idea what you're saying.

(I want to get along with him… but what's irritating is irritating!)

(I wonder if this will someday turn into a different emotion once I grasp his true nature.)

He releases my cheek, and I rub it with my hand to make sure it's not stretched out.

Azel: Anyway, if you intend to get along with me, don't side with the geezer.

Azel: If you can't even do something that simple, there's no point in talking.

Emma: Of course. It's a piece of cake.

-

The next day, after confidently making that declaration—Azel greets me with a terrifying look as I visit the temple again.

Azel: Hey… I told you not to betray me, didn't I?

Emma: …Yes.

Azel: You also said, "It's a piece of cake," didn't you?

Emma: …Yes.

Azel: Then let me ask you—

Azel: …What is that state you're in?

Emma: I'm the one who wants to ask that!

Azel looks down on me as I kneel on the ground, my breath hitching just from standing.

A sweet, heavy scent rising from my skin gradually increases my body heat. It's something different from the heat I felt when I was exhausted from running errands the other day, something that's eating away at my mind and body.

(I had a bad feeling about this ever since I was on my way here…)

*flashback*

Azel: Be careful with your belongings from tomorrow onwards. You never know where they might plant aphrodisiacs.

*back to present*

(...That's a harsh joke.)

Azel: Any ideas?

His star-filled eyes are cold enough to blow away the desert heat, and that in turn cools my head.

Emma: Come to think of it…

*earlier*

Aisha: Good morning, Lady Emma. How about this outfit for today?

Aisha: Since you're in Tanzanite, please enjoy our country's fashionable attire.

Nadia: And we've prepared this perfume for you today.

Nadia: It might be a bit too sweet at first, but the scent will mellow out over time.

Aisha & Nadia: "Now, let's get you ready."

*back to present*

Emma: Before I left… It might be the perfume the maids prepared for me.

(I had the same breakfast as Clavis and Luke, so it can't be that.)

Since I told the maids my schedule for the day, they must have known I was going to see Azel.

(I didn't feel anything immediately after it was applied, so maybe it was slow-acting… I didn't know such aphrodisiacs existed.)

Azel: Perfume is an aphrodisiac for beginners. Why do you fall for such an obvious trap?

Emma: …I didn't think they would actually put it in the perfume!

Emma: To begin with, I've never used or even seen an aphrodisiac, so I don't know what it's like…

Azel: Huh? You've never seen one in your life?

Emma: Of course not!

Azel: There are people like that?

(Is that something to be surprised about…?)

Azel looks genuinely surprised, not as if he's joking.

(I think anyone would be unfamiliar with aphrodisiacs if they live a normal life.)

(But maybe aphrodisiacs are something Azel is familiar with.)

(…Judging from his attitude, it doesn't seem like he uses them willingly…)

(I'm starting to feel sorry for him.)

Azel: Don't look at me like that, don't pity me, it makes me want to cry.

Emma: S-sorry…

Emma: Is there, like, an antidote for this?

Azel: No. We just have to wait for it to wear off.

Azel: But fortunately, it doesn't seem to be that strong.

Azel: It's rare to see a woman this unsexy even after being given an aphrodisiac.

Emma: That last part was unnecessary.

Azel: How honest.

(...Even if the effect is weak, my body feels strange.)

I don't know much about aphrodisiacs, but I do know what kind of effects they have.

The heat generated just from my clothes rubbing against my skin is enough to make me feel ashamed.

On top of that, the outfit the maids prepared for me, while covering my legs with a long skirt, is similar to a dancer's costume that boldly exposes my chest and stomach, which makes me want to cry even more.

(If I had known I was drugged, I wouldn't have come today…)

I'm not in any condition to walk back to the castle through the desert, so I grip my clothes tightly to hold back my tears.

Azel: …I do feel bad about this.

Emma: …? Did you just say—

Emma: Wait… What are you doing!?

Suddenly, Azel lifts me up roughly like a piece of luggage, throws me over his shoulder, and starts walking.

Azel: If this continues, you'll be attacked.

Emma: Huh!?

Azel: I'll teach you how to deal with being given an aphrodisiac… for a fee.

.

.

.

Chapter 7

If you’d like to support my translations, feel free to buy me a coffee here! :)

[shslfanficreader]

@staff please don't recommend posts to people by saying I liked them i beg of you. I don't need people seeing that I like 8700 posts a day about anime characters having filthy explicit graphic sex

[mask131]

The truth about Medusa and her rape... Mythology breakdown time!

With the recent release of the Percy Jackson television series, Tumblr is bursting with mythological posts, and the apparition of Medusa the Gorgon has been the object of numerous talks throughout this website… Including more and more spreading of misinformation, and more debates about what is the “true” version of Medusa’s backstory.

Already let us make that clear: the idea that Medusa was actually “blessed” or “gifted” by Athena her petrifying gaze/snake-hair curse is to my knowledge not at all part of the Antique world. I still do not know exactly where this comes from, but I am aware of no Greek or Roman texts that talked about this – so it seems definitively a modern invention. After all, the figure of Medusa and her entire myth has been taken part, reinterpreted and modified by numerous modern women, feminist activist, feminist movements or artists engaged in the topic of women’s life and social conditions – most notably Medusa becoming the “symbol of raped women’ wrath and fury”. It is an interesting reading and a fascinating update of the ancient texts, and it is a worthy take on its own time and context – but today we are not talking about the posterity, reinvention and continuity of Medusa as a myth and a symbol. I want to clarify some points about the ACTUAL myth or legend of Medusa – the original tale, as told by the Greeks and then by the Romans.

Most specifically the question: Was Medusa raped?

Step 1: Yes, but no.

The backstory of Medusa you will find very often today, ranging from mythology manuals (vulgarization manuals of course) to Youtube videos, goes as such: Medusa was a priestess of Athena who got raped by Poseidon while in Athena’s temple, and as a result of this, Athena punished Medusa by turning her into the monstrous Gorgon.

Some will go even further claiming Athena’s “curse” wasn’t a punishment but a “gift” or blessing – and again, I don’t know where this comes from and nobody seems to be able to give me any reliable source for that, so… Let’s put this out of there.

Now this backstory – famous and popular enough to get into Riodan’s book series for example – is partially true. There are some elements here very wrong – and by wrong I do mean wrong.

The story of Medusa being raped and turned into a monster due to being raped does indeed exist, and it is the most famous and widespread of all the Medusa stories, the one people remembered for the longest time and wrote and illustrated the most about. Hence why Medusa became in the 20th century this very important cultural symbol tied to rape and the abuse of women and victim-blaming. HOWEVER – the origin of this story is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, from the first century CE or so. Ovid? A Roman poet writing for Roman people. “Metamorphoses”? One of the two fundamental works of Roman literature and one of the two main texts of Roman mythology, alongside Virgil’s Aeneid. This is a purely Roman story belonging to the Roman culture – and not the Greek one. The story of Medusa’s rape does not have Greek precedents to my knowledge, Ovid introduced the element of rape – which is no surprise given Ovid turned half of the romances of Greek mythology into rapes. Note that, on top of all this, Ovid wasn’t even writing for religious purposes, nor was his text an actual mythological effort – he wrote it with pure literary intentions at heart. It is just a piece of poetry and literature taking inspiration from the legends of the Greek world, not some sort of sacred text.

Second big point: The legend I summarized above? It isn’t even the story Ovid wrote, since there are a lot of elements that do not come from Ovid’s retelling of the story (book fourth of the Metamorphoses). For example Ovid never said Medusa was a priestess of Athena – all he said was that she was raped in the temple of Athena. I shouldn’t even be writing Athena since again, this is a Roman text: we are speaking of Minerva here, and of Neptune, not of Athena or Poseidon. Similarly, Minerva’s curse did not involve the petrifying gaze – rather all Ovid wrote about was that Minerva turned Medusa’s hair into snakes, to “punish” her because her hair were very beautiful, and it was what made her have many suitors (none of which she wanted to marry apparently), and it is also implied it is what made Neptune fall in love (or rather fall in lust) with her. I guess it is from this detail that the reading of “Athena’s curse was a gift” comes from – even though this story also clearly does victim-blaming of rape here.

But what is very fascinating is that… we are not definitively sure Neptune raped Medusa in Ovid’s retelling. For sure, the terms used by Ovid in his fourth book of Metamorphoses are clear: this was an action of violating, sexually assaulting, of soiling and corrupting, we are talking about rape. But Ovid refers several other times to Medusa in his other books, sometimes adding details the fourth-book stories does not have (the sixth book for examples evokes how Neptune turned into a bird to seduce Medusa, which is completely absent from the fourth book’s retelling of Medusa’ curse). And in all those other mentions, the terms to designate the relationship between Medusa and Neptune are more ambiguous, evoking seduction and romance rather than physical or sexual assault. (It does not help that Ovid has an habit of constantly confusing consensual and non-consensual sex in his poems, meaning that a rape in one book can turn into a romance in another, or reversal)

But the latter fact makes more sense when you recall that the rape element was invented and added by Ovid. Before, yes Poseidon and Medusa loved each other, but it was a pure romance, or at least a consensual one-night. Heck, if we go back to the oldest records of the love between Poseidon and Medusa, back in Hesiod’s Theogony, we have descriptions of the two of them laying together in a beautiful, flowery meadow – a stereotypical scene of pastoral romances – with no mention of any brutality or violence of any sort. As a result, it makes sense the original “romantic” story would still “leak” or cast a shadow over Ovid’s reinvented and slightly-confused tale.

Step 2: So… no rape?

Well, if we go by Greek texts, no, apparently Medusa was not raped in Greek mythology, and only became a rape victim through Ovid.

The Ancient Greek texts all record Poseidon and Medusa sleeping with each other and having children, but no mention of rape. And the whole “curse of Athena” thing is not present in the oldest records – no temple of Athena soiling, no angry Athena cursing a poor girl… “No curse?” you say “But then how did Medusa got turned into a Gorgon”? Answer: she did not. She was born like that.

As I said before, the oldest record of Medusa’s romance but also of her family comes from Hesiod’s Theogony (Hesiod being one of the two “founding authors” of Greek mythology, alongside Homer – Homer did wrote several times about Medusa, but only as a disembodied head and as a monster already dead, so we don’t have any information about her life). And what do we learn? That Medusa is part of a set of three sisters known as the Gorgons – because oh yes, Ovid did not mention Medusa’s sister now did he? How did Medusa’s sisters ALSO got snake-hair or petrifying-gaze if only Medusa was cursed for sleeping with Neptune? Ovid does not give us any answer because again, it is an “adaptational plot hole”, and the people that try to adapt Ovid’s story have to deal with the slight problem of Stheno and Euryale needing to share their sister’s curse despite seemingly not being involved in the whole Neptune business. Anyway, back to the Greek text.

So, you have those three Gorgon sisters, and Medusa is said to be mortal while her sisters are not. Why is it such a big deal? Because Medusa wasn’t originally some random human or priestess. Oh no! Who were the Gorgons’ parents? Phorcys and Keto/Ceto, aka two sea-gods. Not just two sea-gods – two sea-gods of the ancient, primordial generation of sea-gods, the one that predated Poseidon, and that were cousins to the Titans, the sea-gods born of Gaia mating with Pontos.

So the Gorgons were “divine” of nature – and this is why Medusa being a mortal was considered to be a MASSIVE problem and handicap for her, an abnormal thing for the daughter of two deities. But let’s dig a bit further… Who were Phorcys and Ceto? Long story short: in Greek mythology, they were considered to be sea-equivalents of Typhon and Gaia. They were the parents of many monsters and many sea-horrors: Keto/Ceto herself had her name attributed and equated with any very large creature (like whales) or any terrifying monster (like dragons) from the sea. The Gorgons themselves was a trio of monsters, but their sisters, that directly act as their double in the myth of Perseus? The Graiai – the monstrous trio of old women sharing one eye and one tooth. Hesiod also drops the fact that Ladon (the dragon that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperids), and Echidna (the snake-woman that mated with Typhon and became known as the “mother of monsters”) were also children of Phorcys and Ceto, while other authors will add other monster-related characters such as Scylla (of Charybdis and Scylla fame), the sirens, or Thoosa (the mother of Polyphemus the cyclop). Medusa herself is technically a “mother of monsters” since she birthed both Pegasus the flying horse and Chrysaor, a giant. So here is something very important to get: Medusa, and the Gorgons, were part of a family of monsters. Couple that with the absence of any mention of curses in these ancient texts, and everything is clear.

Originally Medusa was not a woman cursed to become a monster: she was born a monster, part of a group of monster siblings, birthed by monster-creating deities, and she belonged to the world of the “primordial abominations from the sea”, and the pre-Olympian threats, the remnants of the primordial chaos. It is no surprise that the Gorgons were said to live at the edge of the very known world, in the last patch of land before the end of the universe – in the most inhuman, primitive and liminal area possible. They were full-on monsters!

Now you might ask why Poseidon would sleep with a horrible monster, especially when you recall that the Greeks loved to depict the Gorgons as truly bizarre and grotesque. It wasn’t just snake-hair and petrifying gaze: they had boar tusks, and metallic claws, and bloated eyes, and a long tongue that constantly hanged down their bearded chin, and very large heads – some very old depictions even show her with a female centaur body! In fact, the ancient texts imply that it wasn’t so much the Gorgon’s gaze or eyes that had the power to turn people into stone – but that rather the Gorgon was just so hideous and so terrifying to look at people froze in terror – and then literally turned into stone out of fear and disgust. We are talking Lovecraftian level of eldritch horror here. So why would Poseidon, an Olympian god, sleep with one of these horrors? Well… If you know your Poseidon it wouldn’t surprise you too much because Poseidon had a thing for monsters. As a sort of “dark double” of Zeus, whereas Zeus fell in love with beautiful princesses and noble queens and birthed great gods and brave heroes, Poseidon was more about getting freaky with all sorts of unusual and bizarre goddesses, and giving birth to bandits and monsters. A good chunk of the villains of Greek mythology were born out of Poseidon’s loins: Polyphemus, Antaios, Orion, Charybdis, the Aloads… And even his most benevolent offspring has freaky stuff about it – Proteus the shapeshifter or Triton half-man half-fish… So yes, Poseidon sleeping with an abominable Gorgon is not so much out of character.

Step 3: The missing link

Now that we established what Medusa started out as, and what she ended up as… We need to evoke the evolution from point Hesiod to point Ovid, because while people summarized the Medusa debate as “Sea-born monster VS raped and punished woman”, there is a third element needed to understand this whole situation…

Yes Ovid did invent the rape. But he did not invent the idea that Medusa had been cursed by Athena.

The “gorgoneion” – the visual and artistic motif of the Gorgon’s head – was, as I said, a grotesque and monstrous face used to invoke fright into the enemies or to repel any vile influence or wicked spirit by the principle of “What’s the best way to repel bad stuff? Badder stuff”. Your Gorgon was your gargoyle, with all the hideous traits I described before – represented in front (unlike all the other side-portraits of gods and heroes), with the face being very large and flat, a big tongue out of a tusked-mouth, snake-hair, bulging crazy eyes, sometimes a beard or scales… Pure monster. But then… from the fifth century BCE to the second century BCE we see a slow evolution of the “gorgoneion” in art. Slowly the grotesque elements disappear, and the Gorgon’s face becomes… a regular, human face. Even more: it even becomes a pretty woman’s face! But with snakes instead of hair. As such, the idea that Medusa was a gorgeous woman who just had snakes and cursed-eyes DOES come from Ancient Greece – and existed well before Ovid wrote his rape story.

But what was the reason behind this change?

Well, we have to look at the Roman era again. Ovid’s tale of Medusa being cursed for her rape at the hands of Neptune had to rival with another record collected by a Greek author Apollodorus, or Pseudo-Apollodorus, in his Bibliotheca. In this collection of Greek myths, Apollodorus writes that indeed, Medusa was cursed by Athena to have her beautiful hair that seduced everybody be turned into snakes… But it wasn’t because of any rape or forbidden romance, no. It was just because Medusa was a very vain woman who liked to brag about her beauty and hair – and had the foolish idea of saying her hair looked better than Athena’s. (If you recall tales such as Arachne’s or the Judgement of Paris, you will know that despite Athena being wise and clever, one of her main flaws is her vanity).

“Wait a minute,” you are going to tell me, “The Bibliotheca was created in the second century CE! Well after Greece became part of the Roman Empire, and after Ovid’s Metamorphoses became a huge success! It isn’t a true Greek myth, it is just Ovid’s tale being projected here…” And people did agree for a time… Until it was discovered, in the scholias placed around the texts of Apollonios of Rhodes, that an author of the fifth century BCE named Pherecyde HAD recorded in his time a version of Medusa’s legend where she had been cursed into becoming an ugly monster as punishment for her vanity. We apparently do not have the original text of Pherecyde, but the many scholias referring to this lost piece are very clear about this. This means that the story that Apollodorus recorded isn’t a “novelty”, but rather the latest record of an older tradition going back to the fifth century BCE… THE SAME CENTURY THAT THE GORGONEION STARTED LOSING THEIR GROTESQUE, and that the face of Medusa started becoming more human in art.

[EDIT: I also forgot to add that this evolution of Medusa is also proved by strange literary elements, such as Pindar's mention in a poem of his (around 490 BCE) of "fair-cheeked Medusa". A description which seems strange given how Medusa used to be depicted as the epitome of ugliness... But that makes sense if the "cursed beauty" version of the myth had been going around at the time!]

And thus it is all connected and explained. Ovid did invent the rape yes – but he did not invent the idea of Athena cursing Medusa. It pre-existed as the most “recent” and dominating legend in Ancient Greece, having overshadowed by Ovid’s time the oldest Hesiodic records of Medusa being born a monster. So what Ovid did wasn’t completely create a new story out of nowhere, but twist the Greek traditions of Athena cursing Medusa and Medusa having a relationship with Poseidon, so that the two legends would form one and same story. And this explains in retrospect why Ovid focuses so much on describing Medusa’s beautiful hair, and why Ovid’s Minerva would think turning her hair into snake would be a “punishment fit for the crime”: these are leftovers of the Greek tale where Medusa was punished for her boasting and her vanity.

CONCLUSION

Here is the simplified chronology of how Medusa’s evolution went.

A) Primitive Greek myths, Hesiodic tradition: Born a monster out of a family of sea-monsters and monstrous immortals. Is a grotesque, gargoylesque, eldritch abomination. Athena has only an indirect conflict with her, due to being Perseus’ “fairy godmother”. Has a lovely romance with Poseidon.

B) Slow evolution throughout Classical Greece and further: Medusa becomes a beautiful, human-looking girl that was cursed to have snake for hair and petrifying eyes, instead of being a Lovecraftian horror people could not gaze upon. Her conflict with Athena becomes direct, as it is Athena that cursed her due to being offended by her vain boasting. Her punishment is for her vanity and arrogant comparison to the goddess.

C) Ovid comes in: Medusa’s romance with Poseidon becomes a rape, and she is now punished for having been raped inside Athena’s temple.

[As a final note, I want to insist upon the fact that the story of Medusa being raped is not less "worthy" than any other version of the myth. Due to its enormous popularity, how it shaped the figure of Medusa throughout the centuries, and how it still survives today and echoes current-day problems, to try to deny the valid place of this story in the world of myths and legends would be foolish. HOWEVER it is important to place back things in their context, to recognize that it is not the ONLY tale of Medusa, that it was NOT part of Greek mythology, but rather of Roman legends - and let us all always remember this time Poseidon slept with a Lovecraftian horror because my guy is kinky.]

EDIT:

For illustration, I will place here visuals showing how the Ancient art evolved alongside Medusa's story.

Before the 5th century BCE: Medusa is a full-on monster

From the 5th century to the 2nd century BCE: A slow evolution as Medusa goes from a full-on monster to a human turned into a monster. As a result the two depictions of the grotesque and beautiful gorgoneion coexist.

Post 2nd century BCE: Medusa is now a human with snake hair, and just that

[honey-tongued-devil]

↠The last drop tour

| Part 1 | | Part 2 | | Part 3 |

This tour is designed to provide those who need it with a complete map of the Last Drop, as well as to help me (and anyone reading my fanfiction, Everytime it Rains) clearly envision the spaces while reading. This tour is incredibly detailed, and I’ll explain both the location and what you’re looking at. Let’s just say I’ll be your personal tour guide! Enjoy!

↠FIRST PART, THE BAR

Let’s start with the entrance! The door is massive, asymmetrical in true Zaun style, made of stained glass and steel. To the right of the door is the Last Drop’s electric meter, while on the left stands the iconic, battered jukebox. In these photos, it looks especially worse for wear because they were taken after the fight between Vi and Sevika.

And we can finally turn around to take in the Last Drop in its entirety! For accuracy, I’ve included both a screenshot from “Jinx Fixes Everything” and an image from Nikolai Lebedev’s ArtStation portfolio.

There are about four fairly large round tables scattered across the central area of the room. The floor is herringbone wood, and the lighting is spread out. While I didn’t take the photos myself, the LED lights are dispersed across the ceiling. On the second floor, you can still spot a yellowish-greenish sign featuring the Last Drop’s symbol, and the “columns” are adorned with blue lights.

If you’re looking for warm lighting, the yellow neon lights and the ones behind the bar are switched on; the cooler lights are positioned along the side walls of the venue.

Before moving on to show you what’s around the main rectangle, I’d like to point out that the staircase to the left of the bar leads to the upper floor. Next to it is a small corridor that takes you to arcade machines and the pool table seen in several scenes.

"What’s on the sides of the rectangle? What do you mean?"

Yeah, I wasn’t sure how else to describe it, but while the public and chaotic section where people dance is the central rectangle, to the right and left of that area are two booths on each side. These booths have fixed tables and heavy curtains that can be closed to ensure maximum privacy.

This is where customers strike deals—we see it in Act 1 when the two Bilgewater pirates threaten Huck. Since the Last Drop came under Silco’s control, the first booth now displays pictures of him (and two other chembarons, though theirs are small and insignificant), commemorating the venue’s inauguration.

So, if you’re looking for privacy, this is the perfect spot.

But follow me—before I take you to Silco’s office, I’ll bring you to another place I’m sure none of you expected to see. Through the door to the right of the bar, there’s a small flat area, perfect for storing spare drinks, followed by a long staircase leading down. But first, we need to grab the key. Silco cared deeply about keeping this place intact, so it’s been locked up the entire time. In the meantime, take a look at the bar!

The key is nailed to one of the planks of the bar—it was necessary to stop here to retrieve it. But let’s not dawdle, down we go!

I know you’d never have guessed, but Silco was an extremely sentimental person. He decided not to touch the little room where Vander and his kids used to live. Instead, he locked it up and let it remain "sacred" in its own way. The room is very small and packed with stuff, so it’s hard to move around. You’ll have to settle for a quick glimpse. Let me jog your memory by reminding you that when Vander talks to Vi and sends Mylo and Claggor out of the room, the staircase Claggor sits on is the same one we just came down.

What do you say—shall we head back up? Taking the staircase on the left side of the bar, we arrive at the upper floor! At first glance, it’s just a mezzanine, as it aligns with the "public" rectangle of the bar below. To the left of the stairs, we have Silco’s office, which I’ll show you in detail another time. Over there, where you now see the barrels, is where, in my story, there’s a door leading to the upstairs area—currently Vander and the kids’ home. That door gets covered during event nights to prevent any troublemakers from wandering into their house. On the right, we have the DJ’s console and more tables for those who’d rather enjoy their drinks in peace than join the dance floor.

The reason I suggest you take a break and grab a drink before entering Silco's office is that there's really a lot to see. Here you’ll find my Masterlist, which includes both Part 1 and Part 2 of the tour.

[ldrfanatic]

two worlds collided

theodore nott x fem!malfoy!ravenclaw!reader

a.n. this is quickly becoming a theo obsession blog BUT I am open to requests for others

love theo in this piece.

to be added to my theo nott taglist just comment on one of my theo nott posts :)

synopsis - you're draco's sister but you're a ravenclaw. your father shunned you because he thought that voldemort wouldn't want you but when Nott sr is trying to find theodore a bride your father takes this as the perfect opportunity. over time you grow to genuinely care for one another.

warning - cursing, lucius malfoy is a prick, hitting, borderline verbal abuse, arranged marriage

accompanying song - never tear us apart (bishop briggs)

works slytherin boys

"Father is asking for you."

Shock washed over you and you wondered if you submerged yourself into your cloud-like bed if Lucius would just forget about it. After carefully weighing your options, it seemed rather unlikely. You threw your navy covers to the side and shuffled awkwardly to the main dining hall where your mother, father, and older brother Draco were waiting.

Your eyes fell onto a rather scary looking man and another handsome figure who you recognized as Theodore Nott, one of Draco's friends.

"Daughter." The warm velvet tones of Narcissa Malfoy filled the air. After you'd been sorted into Ravenclaw, Draco and Lucius had shunned you. Narcissa had been the only person in the entire family still kind to you. Well, she and your estranged aunt Andromeda who you'd been secretly exchanging letters since third year.

"Now that the Dark Lord has gained strength, it is imperative that we maintain close connections within the Sacred 28." Lucius approached you, looking rather unhinged, and placed a large hand on your shoulder. There was a malicious look in his eyes that made the entire interaction all the more unnerving. "Once the Dark Lord begins his plans, he'll need people he can trust to continue the most important of magical bloodlines."

Your father took you by the shoulders and moved you to stand in front of Theodore and the mystery man at his side.

"This is Theodore Nott Sr. and his son, who I presume you know from school."

Nott Sr. glanced to the side at Theodore who snapped out of a sort of trance. He brought your hand up to his lips and placed a gentle kiss on it.

"Y/n."

You smiled but didn't say anything, waiting in silence for your father to elaborate. He and Nott Sr. had clearly formed some sort of plan. "You and his son are to be married."

"What?!" Your body whipped around of its own accord and you felt rage explode over your body. "You haven't spoken to me in years and suddenly you expect me to marry this man without even asking me if I wish to be married to him or anyone for that matter?!"

Lucius' hand came down suddenly. A loud 'whack' resounded in the room as the back of his palm made contact with your cheek. "You ungrateful little brat." He straightened his cloak and took what you supposed was meant to be a calming breath. "Draco noticed the way that you stared at the Nott boy in school. You ought to be more appreciative that I didn't choose that awful Pucey boy although he was more than willing."

Though you couldn't see, Theodore's nose turned up in disgust at the mention of Adrian Pucey. He'd taken a liking to you, completely undeterred by the elder Malfoy's numerous threats to stay away from his younger sister. Draco might've been appalled that you'd been sorted into Ravenclaw, but that didn't mean that he was gonna let that slimey tosser terrorize you.

Your gaze stayed on the floor for a few moments before you turned back around, muttering a small apology to Theodore and his father. Overall, Theo was quite handsome and you had stared at him more than a few times. He really was quite handsome.

Nott Sr. studied you for a few moments then turned to Theodore expectantly. "Why don't the two of you take a stroll and become acquainted while Lucius and I finish up the particulars." It was phrased like a question, but in truth he wasn't asking. The air was silent as you walked out of the room the brunette boy following diligently.

The cool air nipped at your exposed skin as the heavy oak door slammed shut behind you. It was always cold and dark in the area surrounding Malfoy Manor.

"I'm sorry Theodore."

"Theo."

You stared at Theodore like a fish out of water waiting for words of any intelligence to come to you. Finally, you stuttered out an ignorant 'Huh?'.

"Call me Theo."

Your heart beat loudly in you ears for a few moments. "Oh-kay," Theo began to mosey into the Manor gardens with you hot on his heels. He was quite tall and due to the length of his legs, every one step he took was nearly three of yours. "So Theo. I am sorry you got dragged into this."

"That's alright fiancée." Theo teased you with a smile that could make any girl weak in the knees. For a moment you felt as though you could almost forget that the both of you were being forced into this.

"Still. I know your reputation. I only ask that you keep your conquests separate from our entanglement."

An indescribable akin to hurt flashed in the eyes of the boy before you. As well as something you didn't quite recognize.

"My reputation?" You spluttered at him for a few moments once again making a fool of yourself in front of Theodore Nott.

"Theo I didn't mean to--"

"Whatever." He turned away from you and stalked angrily back towards the Manor, calling over his shoulder. "And it's Theodore."

The rest of the break passed by pretty miserably, as expected. You and Theodore had gone on a few dates, as demanded by both your father and Nott Sr. since the pair of you were courting now, but they were long and excruciating with little to no conversation.

Despite a summer that seemed as though it would never end, September finally arrived.

You were boarding the train with Theodore and Draco as your parents watched on. They'd been keeping an extra close eye on the pair of you. In all honesty, you and Theodore hadn't grown any closer in your courtship than you'd been as distant acquaintances the year prior. If anything, the walk in the garden at the start of your relationship had forced you further apart.

And though you'd pretended you didn't care, seeing Theodore with other girls was never something you'd enjoyed. Now, knowing that he'd be your husband sooner rather than later, the thought of Theo running around with some daft blonde Slytherin made your heart sink to your stomach.

Yet, as the year progressed, you and the rest of Hogwarts were unexpectedly surprised by Theo. Before you knew it, the first snowfall graced Hogwarts in November, and Theodore hadn't had any flings with any girls. He was even turning down girls that had been brave enough to approach him and make the first move.

Without your parents to keep the two of you tightly bound, you and Theodore hadn't spoken since the train in.

Through all of this, you hadn't expected to become close friends with Pansy Parkinson, a Slytherin girl in Theo and Draco's year. But she'd walked up to you during breakfast one morning and the two of you really hit it off.

Hence why currently, you were sat on Pansy's bed while she worked on her charms homework. And she was putting her absolute all into trying to convince you to ask Theo to Hogsmeade.

"C'mon Y/n! It might be fun."

"If by fun you mean he'll humiliate me in front of the entire student body." You mumbled under your breath. You tried to tune her out so as to focus on the book you were currently attempting to read, but she was determined.

"According to Blaise Theo's been talking about you when Draco isn't around to glare at him for it."

"Look Pans, I know you're in love with the bloke but have you considered that Blaise may be confused? Or simply taking the mickey?" Pansy shot you an unimpressed look. "Theo and I haven't spoken since September. In any case, if he's turning down long legged red heads who are all but stripping in front of him, what makes you think he'd want to go out with me?"

"Because he's already agreed to speak with you in the Slytherin Common Room tonight."

"What?!"

Pansy ignored your protests and damn near dragged you down to the common room with an iron grip on your wrist. When you got there, Theo was spread out on one of the expensive leather couches with a cigarette in between his lips. Yet as he noticed you approaching, he immediately dropped it and put it out with a stomp on the stone floors.

"Y/n."

The sonorous tones of Theo's voice bounced off each wall of the common room and seemed to warm you from the inside out. His voice was so inviting that you almost believed you could actually do this.

There is, however, one thing to know about Theodore Nott. No matter how inviting or pleasant Theo's aura is, you'd made a promise to yourself not to look him in the eyes. You knew that if you made the unfortunate mistake to look Theodore Nott in his malachite eyes, you'd lose all ability to think, speak, even breathe properly.

It wasn't until you saw his shoes enter your line of sight that you knew that he'd approached you at all. Worse, when his large hand found purchase under your chin and lifted your gaze to meet his, you knew that you were well and truly fucked.

In that most regrettable moment, you realized how much you'd fallen in love with Theodore. During shared hushed dates and the rare moments of laughter. Theodore Nott had completely enraptured you. And you realized much too late to do anything about it.

So now here you stood. Lost in the beautiful blues and greens of your fiancée's eyes. You were completely, 100% at Theodore Nott's mercy. And likely not for the last time in your life, you felt the urge to give into him. He was a sin that you'd willingly drown in.

"Bellisima," Theo's voice thickened as he spoke. You couldn't understand what he was saying nor could you place the language. But in all honesty, you hadn't known that he even spoke any other languages. His tongue wrapped effortlessly around each syllable and his voice deepened even more than usual, if possible. "I asked you a question."

"Huh?"

"You've been avoiding me." He stepped closer and your heartbeat spiked. "Why?"

Why had you been ignoring Theo again? How could you, or anyone for that matter, ever dream of not giving this devastatingly handsome man everything he desired and more? Oh yeah. Your wretched father.

"You've already been roped into entrapment with me and then forced to hang out with me all summer. I didn't want to cause anymore turmoil to your peace than I already have."

Theo's lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. Once again you'd gone and offended the poor boy.

Immediately, you opened your mouth to apologize, but he cut you off.

"D'you know for a Ravenclaw, you really can be rather thick sometimes?"

You felt your jaw drop in shock. The small grin he currently sported on his face let you know that he'd obviously been teasing. And for the umpteenth time since knowing him, Theo stole your breath with his stupid mesmerizing smile.

Yet, through all of that, he was right. You genuinely had no idea what he was talking about. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Theo finally seemed to get the hint that he was going to have to spell this out for you.

"I know you probably don't know this about me, but I never do anything that I don't want to. No matter who's asking."

You continued to stare at him blankly. Had he hit his head during the last quidditch match?

Theo ran a hand stressfully through his hair. He grabbed your wrist and led you back to the couches where you settled comfortably in the seat next to him, careful to maintain a respectful distance. "Merlin, Y/n. Turns out you Malfoy's are all slow."

"No offense." He added on quickly when he saw the look on your face. "That's not the point. Y/n I never would have agreed to this engagement with you if I didn't actually want to. I know that you did not get a say in the matter so if you truly wish to live our lives separately, I will respect your choice." Theo gently pulled your hand until it was safely tucked in between both of his larger ones.

"But whatever your decision, know that I am yours. I have wanted nothing more in the past few months than to be by your side. And every moment I spend without you is inexplicable torture for my soul."

"Theo."

He shook his head and cradled you face between his palms.

"No. My mother had a saying. Lascia che la vita accada. It means 'let life happen'. She believed that the only way to truly know if something is meant for you is to let life make it happen on its own. So take a few days. I'll meet you Saturday morning in the Great Hall. But know that if you agree to be mine, Tesoro, you'll be mine for eternity."

To say that staying away from Theo in the days following was easy would be a complete and total lie. When you told Pansy about the conversation the pair of you had (or lack thereof really) she'd all but exploded.

Finally, Saturday morning rolled around. You'd genuinely thought about all your options and you'd come to a decision. The only issue with Theo's plan is that Saturday was the infamous Gryffindor v Slytherin Quidditch match. The Great Hall was bustling in seas of only red or green. You were sporting a dark green jumper, a show of obvious support for the Slytherin team.

Those of your house that favored Gryffindor looked on at you with disdain as you stood from your bench and began making your way to the Slytherin table in search of Theo. He was one of Slytherin's chasers so trying to find him during such a hectic morning proved difficult.

As you walked up and down the table, a familiar figure appeared in front of you.

"Ahh Malfoy. I've been looking for you. I was wonderin' if you'd wear my jersey."

Before you had time to respond or even acknowledge the situation at all, Adrian Pucey had shoved his green and silver practice jersey into your arms. It was an incredibly common practice for girlfriends and boyfriends of Quidditch players to wear their partner's jerseys to their games for good luck.

The hall fell silent as the sound of glass breaking reverberated through the air. You looked to the source of the noise. Theo had stood so abruptly from his seat next to Blaise and Lorenzo that his entire breakfast went flying and ended up on the floor.

He was staring at you with clear ache in his eyes. Suddenly, he swung himself over the bench and stormed out of the room.

You threw Adrian's awful smelling jersey back at his face and ran frantically after Theo.

"Theo!" He ignored you and continued walking briskly even as you approached quickly on his heels. "Theodore please. Just let me explain."

"You don't owe me an explanation, dolcezza ragazza. You've made your choice."

"You've got it all wrong. That's not my decision. I don't want that." You cried out as tears brimmed your eyes. The thought of losing Theo because of Adrian Pucey was mournful.

"Hey, hey. Calma tesoro. Breathe." Theo's hands one again found their way to your face. He gently thumbed the tears from your face. "Don't get yourself all worked up. I'll always listen to you."

"Adrian he just sort of threw his disgusting jumper at me. I don't want him. I only want you. I'm yours, Theodore Nott, completely and without hesitation."

The grin on Theo's face was nothing short of heart-stopping.

"Does that mean you'll wear my jersey at the game today?"

wc 2.6k oops

4.17.24

-- taglist --

@thatdammchickennugget @moonlightreader649

[zhongrin]

bound matriarch

© zhongrin | 2024 ✼  [✘] no repost・translations・plagiarism of any kind・ai data mining. [✓] rebloggers get a free cup of tea ♡

✼ characters ┈ zhongli

✼ tags ┈ yandere, fem!pronouns ('wife', 'matriarch', 'goddess' used), zhongli as morax/rex lapis, set right after archon war

✼ a/n ┈ i have to be out all day today so i'm not sure if i'll be at home when this goes out but let me just say FINALLY I CAN RELEASE THIS. THIS HAS BEEN ON MY DRAFTS FOR SO LONG (i'd also like to silently thank jessamine bc their comments on my posts were the main catalyst for me to finish this little blurb sobsob)

ᴏᴜʀ ꜰᴜʟʟ ᴍᴇɴᴜ (ᴍᴀꜱᴛᴇʀʟɪꜱᴛ)  ✼ ᴍᴇᴍʙᴇʀꜱʜɪᴘ (ᴛᴀɢʟɪꜱᴛ)

oh, what a dream it is to be the spouse of the strongest archon in teyvat, whom he wed right after archon war ended. some might see the celebratory wedding as something uncouth; an utter disrespect to the lives lost at war and the bereaved families, but the lord of geo disagrees. what could be a better reassurance to ensure the people of liyue would start believing in and striving for a brighter future, than the joyous union of the new geo archon who defended them throughout the arduously long war and the prosperity goddess who has the power to bless the land and its people?

you're draped in gold and red as you sign the oath in blood; sealing your matrimony amidst the cheers of the mortals and immortals alike. the ruby reds on your lips are plush and soft against their god's own, the gossamer thread of embroidered gold of your clothing matching your now-husband's attire. even the bright blue sky seemed to celebrate such a joyous occasion, casting its warm rays upon the now-peaceful land of liyue to offer you its blessing.

they do not know that one certain party was most ardently unwilling to take the vow under one of the most sacred contracts of all.

they need not know that the marriage was a desperate attempt to shackle you to him and erase your individual worth as a goddess; to ensure you are remembered as rex lapis' beloved wife, the matriarch of liyue. they need not know, for just as no one questioned why the god of freedom was not invited into the banquet, no one questioned why a sheer veil covered the lower part of your unsmiling face, or the fact that countless shackles cor petrae accessories heavily rested against your neck and limbs.

what they do know is that this is your prison home ー he is your captor home and you will never belong anywhere else.

and perhaps given a few eons, you shall learn it too. worry not, your husband is a patient god. but you best remember that a god's patience, too, has its limits.

✼ ᴍᴇᴍʙᴇʀꜱʜɪᴘ (ᴛᴀɢʟɪꜱᴛ) ┈

@abyssmal-skies ! @hamdehlesmis ! @sunnshineflxwer ! @queen-belial ! @silentmoths

@dustofthedailylife ! @marina-and-the-memes ! @mixed-kester ! @lordbugs ! @anonymousficreader

@irethepotato ! @sassy-cat-in-town ! @syrenkitsune ! @smokipoki ! @cakeboxie

@crystalflygeo ! @ciexuvia ! @illaasya ! @celestewritestoomuch ! @pams-comfortzone

@spidermanluvr444 ! @ourstrawberryclouds ! @ryuryuryuyurboat ! @hrts4hanniehae ! @fiannee

@frosts-intuition ! @florapocalypses ! @genshin-impacts-me ! @scarasmood ! @hellcatinnc

@beloved-brynn ! @malachitemischief101 ! @average-yandere-enjoyer

[burst-of-iridescent]

South Asian and Hindu Influences in ATLA (Part 1)

disclaimer: i was raised culturally and religiously hindu, and though i've tried to do my research for this post and pair it with my own cultural knowledge, i'm not an expert on hinduism by any means. should i mess up, please let me know.

please also be aware that many of the concepts discussed in this post overlap heavily with religions such as buddhism and jainism, which might have different interpretations and representations. as i'm not from those religions or cultures, i don't want to speak on them, but if anyone with that knowledge wishes to add on, please feel free.

it's well-known that atla draws from indigenous, east and southeast asian influences, but something i rarely see discussed in the fandom is the influences the show takes from hinduism and south asia, and there are actually far more than i think people are aware of.

so here's a (non-exhaustive list) of the main inspirations atla drew from south asian culture and hinduism, starting with...

The Avatar

the title of the show itself is taken from the ancient language of sanskrit, often considered the sacred tongue of the hindu religion. in sanskrit, the word "avatar" means to "descend" or "alight".

the concept of the avatar is a very old one, referring to the physical incarnation of a powerful deity or spirit. the idea of the avatar is most often linked to the god Vishnu, one of three supreme hindu gods collectively called the trimurti, or trinity. the avatar is said to manifest upon earth primarily in times of great need, when balance must be maintained between the forces of good and evil.

atla borrows heavily from this idea in having aang be the incarnation of a divine spirit who returns to the world during a time of immense strife, and is tasked with defeating a great evil to bring balance back to the world. and though i don't know if it was an intentional reference, it's interesting to note that Krishna, the most famous incarnation of Vishnu was also reborn amidst a fierce storm and carried through a raging sea to a new home where he would be protected from the king who sought to kill him. sounds a little familiar, doesn't it?

Agni Kai and the Philosophy of Firebending

the word "agni" derives from the sanskrit name Agni, the god of fire, though it can also generally mean "fire".

the concepts of lightning bending and the sun being the source of firebending are likely also taken from the idea of Agni, since he's said to exist simultaneously in three different forms on three different dimensions: as fire on earth, as lightning in the atmosphere, and as the sun in the sky.

Agni is a significant aspect of many rituals, including marriage rites, death rites, and the festivals of holi and diwali. the concept of Agni is one of duality: life and death, rebirth and destruction. hindu rituals accept and celebrate both aspects, revolving around the idea that destruction is not separate from creation, but rather necessary to facilitate it. the cremation of the dead, for instance, is seen as purification, not destruction: burning away the physical form so the soul is unencumbered, set free to continue the reincarnation cycle.

this influence can be seen in the firebending masters episode, which discusses the idea of fire being vital to life. the sun warriors safeguarding the original fire and demanding that zuko and aang bring fire to the dragons as a sacrifice could also reference the ritual of Agnihotra - the ritual of keeping a fire at the home hearth and making offerings to it. the purpose of this ritual differs depending on which text you refer to, but it is generally believed to purify the person and atmosphere in which it is performed, similar to how zuko and aang must make offerings to ran and shaw and survive their fire before being deemed worthy and pure.

Agnihotra is said to serve as a symbolic reminder of the vitality and importance of fire as the driving force of life, a lesson that zuko and aang also internalize from their encounter with the dragons.

Bumi

bumi's name is taken from the sanskrit word "bhumi", which means "earth". it's also the name of the hindu goddess of the earth, bumi or bhudevi.

one of the things the original animation didn't do and which i really enjoyed about the live action was that they made bumi indian and added desi inspiration to omashu. it makes perfect sense for a king whose name is as hindu-inspired as they come.

NWT Royal Palace

chief arnook's palace in the northern water tribe takes inspiration from the gopurams of hindu temples, massive pyramidal structures that served as entrance towers to the temple.

gopurams were built tall enough to be seen for miles around, beacons to signal tired or weary travellers who wished for a place to rest that a temple was nearby. it's a nice touch that the chief's palace is located in front of the spirit oasis, a similarly symbolic entryway to a sanctuary housing otherworldly deities.

Betrothal Necklaces

to preface: i doubt this was an intentional reference, and this great post talks about other cultures that could have inspired the water tribe betrothal necklaces. given the desi influence in the nwt architecture however, i figured it was worth mentioning.

the idea of betrothal necklaces being given to women by their male partners is similar to the thaali, a necklace given to hindu wives by their husbands. during hindu weddings, grooms tie the thaali around their brides' necks to symbolize their marriage. once given, wives are expected to wear their thaali till the day they die, as doing so is believed to bring good luck, health and prosperity to their husbands.

Chi-Blocking

though chi-blocking takes primary inspiration from the art of Dim Mak, it is also influenced by the south indian martial arts forms of adimurai and kalaripayattu, both of which include techniques of striking vital points in the body to disable or kill an opponent.

kalaripayattu also shares parallels with firebending, being a very physically demanding, aggressive martial art that emphasises the importance of discipline and mental fortitude. control of the mind is essential to control of the body, a philosophy similar to that espoused by iroh across the show.

Wan Shi Tong's Library

the library draws inspiration partly from the taj mahal, the famous mausoleum constructed by shah jahan during the mughal empire as a monument to his beloved wife, mumtaz mahal.

i'll end this post here since it's getting too long as it is, and the following section will be even longer. for while atla treated the concepts in this post with respect, the same unfortunately cannot be said for its depiction of guru pathik and combustion man - both of which we'll be discussing next.

[jessamine-rose]

⋆˚♱ଘ Requiem for the Damned ଓ♱˚⋆

*holds head in hands* Idk why Dottore keeps haunting me with writing inspo. And for this idea to manifest just before Holy Week….fuck it, I hope you all enjoy the blasphemous tale of Priest! Dottore x Demon! Darling _:(´ཀ`」 ∠):

Tw:: yandere, violence, death, religious abuse, dubcon, mention of nsfw, MINORS DNI

Note:: fictional depictions of religion

♡ 2.7k words under the cut ♡

♡ Despite your status as a wandering demon, you have no place in human cognizance. Rather, you conceal yourself from mortal eyes in favor of close observations and whispered temptations. Humans, from your perspective, are interesting creatures—they are ambitious, easily influenced by spiritual beings, capable of both good and evil.

♡ And what better example than the one who summoned you on a starry night? Such rituals are not uncommon amongst heretics, but most only succeed in invoking the contempt of their fellow humans. And few would invoke your name, much less commit sacrilege within the walls of the Church.

♡ You sense danger immediately upon your appearance. Within the summoning circle, you take note of your sigil perfectly illustrated in blood against marble. Beyond it, what alarms you is not your sacred surroundings nor the fresh corpse mixed with your offerings of books and fruit. It is the figure standing over you, cloaked in moonlight, gazing at you with eyes the color of hellfire.

“My ritual is a success. Welcome to my humble church, o noble demon…or would you rather be addressed by your epithet? ______, Fallen Seraph, the Seeker of Forbidden Knowledge.”

♡ A glimpse into his soul is all it takes to strike fear into your heart. Within Hell, there are rumors of a small village in Sumeru. Its people are nothing of note, a congregation of simpletons whose lives revolve around the beliefs of their Church. The lone exception is the main priest, Father Zandik, better known as Il Dottore.

♡ The stories, passed through human voices, speak of a child ostracized for his unconventional beliefs and his interest in the macabre. Branded a madman, he was placed in the care of the Church elders who corrected his ways of thinking. Once he became of age, Zandik was given the choice to move out of the rectory or to remain as a priest; he chose the latter of his own volition.

♡ Since his ordination, Zandik has proved himself to be an exceptional priest. He educates the masses, reviews theological texts, performs exorcisms, and provides religious counsel for the doubtful. He even serves as the town’s doctor, fully gaining the acceptance of his community.

♡ The rumors don’t stop there. For Il Dottore earned his title by performing miracles. It is he who guides the people into religious ecstasy, he who cures the sick from mysterious curses, he who blesses the weak into “enhanced humans.” There are already whispers that once Dottore’s mortality catches up with him, he will surely be canonized as the Patron Saint of Doctors and Miracles.

♡ But spiritual beings such as yourself know the truth. That Dottore is neither a kind priest nor a devout believer, that his days in the Church only magnified his heretical inclinations. Disillusioned with God, Zandik decided to turn His religious sanctuary into his own laboratory, one where he could fulfill his lust for knowledge through a mask of holiness.

♡ He manipulates the people with false teachings. He triggers religious ecstasy with drugged incense. He singles out devotees to “test their faith” during the quiet hours of the Church. And what the town perceives as curses and miracles are actually scientific experiments in which Dottore plays god.

♡ It’s too late to escape. No matter your divine powers, nothing prepares you for Dottore’s traps. The incantations, the barrier of the summoning circle, an aura so holy yet sinister that it couldn’t possibly come from ordinary religious objects—all you can do is fall to your knees and beg for his mercy, all the while he watches you with a confident smile.

♡ His intentions are like that of any human: He summoned you to form a contract. In exchange for his soul, he demands your knowledge, your resources, your full servitude for so long as he roams the mortal plane. Your hesitation only triggers another wave of scorching pain, followed by panic as Dottore grips your horn and forces you to face him.

“Make no mistake, ______. The mere fact of your divinity does not make you indestructible. In exchange for your cooperation, you will bear witness to experiments of the same magnitude as God’s creations. What say you?”

♡ You have no other choice. And that is how, in the sanctity of the Church, you make a deal with the human named Zandik. Once the pact has been forged, Dottore admires the bright sigil on his chest, plucks a few feathers from your wings, and disables the summoning circle so you can leave. Thus begins your personal hell.

♡ It is easy for you to answer Dottore’s questions about the divine. The horror lies in assisting him in experiments, responding to his summons no matter the inconvenience, allowing him to extract your blood, tears, and feathers. No, what’s most humiliating is when he uses your body for his “research,” bending you over the altar and bringing you to physical ecstasy against your will.

♡ At this point, you don’t know who to pray to. One night, Dottore shows you a secret room in his laboratory. As soon as he lights the lamps, your eyes take in numerous bodies and skeletons of a different classification from his usual victims. The extra bones jutting from the scapulas, the amputated wings, the halos pinned to the walls, the holy aura you’d felt from his religious objects…instantly, Dottore’s powers make sense.

“This is my first specimen. She was my guardian angel…no, I jest. She was a mere messenger who implored me to repent for my sins. From her words, I deduced it had been within Heaven’s capacity to save me during my youth—and yet God only sent an angel to me after my first act of blasphemy.”

The angels…how many has he killed? Not even during your fall from Heaven did you feel such primal fear for your life. But you cannot scream—you have long been trained to resist fight and flight. All you can do is listen to Dottore’s explanation, watch as he approaches a pure white skeleton and wraps his hands around its fractured hyoid bone.

He gives you a calm smile. “Luckily, her body provided me with indispensable resources for my experiments and my procurement of her brethren. I believe her name was Sohreh.”

♡ Just when you think it can’t get any worse, Dottore points at the far corner of the room to reveal a space dedicated to demons. Four dead bodies, their causes of death vividly described. Horns, wings, and other body parts amputated in exchange for lives spared after exorcisms. And when Dottore returns to your side, tracing the wound from where he broke off your horn, you can only tremble and acquiesce to a checkup. It grows back fully by the end of the year.

♡ He has his moments of vulnerability, however. Perhaps it is due to your nature as a demon, a creature which represents evil, that Dottore does not hide his heart from you. Once, after his usual confessions—he always makes up trivial sins—he remains in the confessional until his fellow priest has left. Then he goes to the altar and summons you.

♡ What catches you off-guard is not his lack of greetings. Rather, it’s the way he pulls you close to his body, lips ghosting the curve of your ear. There, in the heart of the Church, he whispers to you every sin he has ever committed. Despite his normal tone of voice, his words have never betrayed a language so guiltless, so sincere, so human.

♡ He asks how much of his madness is to blame on the influence of demons, or if he had been born wicked. He asks if humans were truly given the mental faculties to withstand temptation regardless of their circumstances. He asks if the same can be said for spiritual beings, questioning why former angels like you were also created with the capacity to sin. He even asks if praying for a demon can offer them any hope of salvation.

♡ It takes you a while to answer his questions. It’s just like him to put your emotions in disarray, to make you feel pity for the very cause of your current suffering. Against your nature, you wonder if there is still a chance for Zandik, if he can somehow repent or find a way to save himself from your contract and all of his sins. Even if it is too late, He has always been more forgiving to humans than angels.

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨

“Do you know why I became a demon, Zandik?”

Your question is what prompts Zandik to pull away from you, though his touch lingers. His gaze, as always, is unfathomable; you can never discern what hides within those pools of crimson.

“No, I do not. Few demonological texts allude to your existence, and only the Lesser Key of Deshret cites your previous status as an angel of the highest ranking. I have made theories in relation to your epithets but I respect all possibilities. Now what would you, as the primary source, reveal to me?”

Now it is your turn to confess.

“Seraphim are the closest to God but for that reason, we are the most distant from His creations. Everything we know of the world is derived only from what He tells us, not our own insights. And so I defied His Word and ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, committing the same sin which condemned all of humanity.”

The tip of your upper wing brushes against Zandik’s face, while your middle wings encircle his body in a loose hug. As for your lower wings…they are nothing but twin scars covered in short feathers. After your descent, it seemed like a rational decision to chop them off, broken as they were. It helped that your wings had just outgrown their original purpose.

For once, you barely flinch at the sensation of his touch against your scars. Many times, Zandik has inquired about the loss of your lower wings and even asked if he could have them. They still remain in Hell, tucked away in a corner of your home, eyes forever closed.

It takes a few seconds for him to respond. “Do you ever regret your decision?”

You shrug. “It was difficult at first, naturally. Many of my eyes were blinded—yes, that is why I rarely open the ones on my wings—but those which still function have seen so many wonderful sights up-close. Neither must I cover my face with my remaining wings. And despite being what your kind and my former brethren would dub a monster…I’m happier now.”

“I see, I see.” His curiosity appears far from sated, however, a sentiment you can empathize with. “As I thought, God is incomprehensible. For Him to deny even His greatest creation of salvation…it confirms that there are limits to the forgiveness of that which humans call a ‘loving god.’ Thank you for sharing this knowledge with me.”

And just as quickly as he initiated his confession, Zandik steps out of your grasp and dismisses you. But you make no haste, silently watching him after you “leave.”

His expression is thoughtful. A gloved hand touches his chest, right above your sigil.

Such an interesting creature.

Honestly, you don’t know what to make of your feelings for this human. Much as you despise his cruel treatment towards you, he never fails to capture your interest with his experiments and philosophies. Whenever he speaks of God, you wonder if a small part of him still desires to be saved. But that will never be.

Zandik preaches salvation with the knowledge that he will never receive it. For the Church never taught him how to love.

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨

♡ Il Dottore never became the Patron Saint of Doctors and Miracles. Neither did he have a funeral mass befitting of a priest, nor a peaceful death from natural causes. Instead, he died young, laicized, once again denounced as a heretic by his community.

♡ You don’t know how his crimes were exposed, and why now. Perhaps it is God’s punishment for him, a blessing for his victims, or both. Either way, Dottore paid for his sins on a sunny day, burned at the stake before a disdainful crowd. Not long after his heart stopped beating, his belongings were thrown into the fire—research, tools, anything which carried his memory.

♡ You never left his side. After his last rites, led by an elderly bishop who condemned Zandik as he did in the past, you sat next to him and offered a final conversation. He didn’t express any fear nor sadness in regards to his imminent death, merely stating it a pity that his achievements could never be appreciated in his town.

♡ …He did ask if there is any chance of meeting again in Hell, but you reminded him that the punishment of sinners is out of your jurisdiction. Plus, it’s better that way—you have no desire to avenge yourself, and you’d rather not witness Zandik’s suffering for all eternity. You can only imagine the severity of his punishment, what more if he is assigned to one of the demons he exorcized.

♡ During his execution, you stood at the front of the crowd. You kept your eyes trained on him, for so long as his scarlet orbs remained open, whispering the prayers for the dead on his behalf. While a part of you felt liberated, another was mournful. You hope your last words to Zandik gave him solace in his final moments.

“Rest now, Zandik. God may never forgive your sins, but I shall.”

♡ And thus ends the life of Il Dottore. In the following days, the Church is purged of its holy, sinister aura, mainly because they discarded the religious objects tainted with angel remains. You continue your usual obligations as a wandering demon, but the humans you observe pale in comparison to your companion of many years.

♡ Not long after, you return to Hell for your other divine duties. As soon as you appear in your abode, however, something feels off. The sinister aura, the offering of books and fruit, your lower wings gone from their original place… The answer comes in the form of a hand grabbing you by the horn, pulling you backwards, twisting your body to meet a familiar gaze the color of hearth-fire. Only, this time, those eyes are brimming with pure joy, paired with a genuine smile.

♡ Apparently, Dottore’s soul did end up in Hell but not in the way you expected. In a proud voice, he explains that the Devil gave him a special fate. Whether it was due to vacant positions or everyone’s fear of the infamous “Demon-Killer,” you’ll never know. What Dottore does confirm is that as the demon bound to him via contract, you have to take responsibility and act as his companion in Hell.

“Rather than subject me to eternal suffering, the Devil believed that my talents would prove useful for the punishments of my fellow sinners. How wonderful is it for my achievements to be recognized in Hell? …Oh? I didn’t predict such a physical reaction from you. All of your eyes are wide open, and you seem to be on the verge of fainting.”

♡ You don’t know if you want to laugh or cry. To think your personal hell has been extended to eternity—are your sins enough to warrant such a fate?! But after confirming your misfortune, all you can do is sigh and tend to Zandik. He looks exactly the same, with the exception of a few burn scars on his body. And judging by the familiar black feathers on his person, he seems eager to discard his former religious attire along with his mask of faith.

♡ And when Zandik unfastens his scorched cassock, he takes your hand and places it on his unburned chest, right above your sigil. It glows vibrantly, brighter than any light you laid eyes on in Heaven. And beneath the flesh, you can feel his heart beating in sync with yours.

“Tell me, ______, do I still appear human to you?”

“You already know my answer to that question. But fine, I’ll admit it: Yes, you always have.”

♡ 

More Church AU here!! Capitano ๑ Arlecchino ๑ Pantalone ๑ Pierro ๑ Dainsleif

Note:: Please do not send me any Church AU asks/ requests involving other characters or dynamics who are not listed in my masterlist.

At long last, I am free from Priesttore…thank you to everyone. To my readers, to my fellow Dottore simps, to my mutuals who indulged my tortured DMs after midnight, to the artist whose fan art inspired this idea to begin with. May you all have a lovely day╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

Tag a Dottore enjoyer!! @leftdestiny-posts @beloved-blaiddyd @mochinon-yah @diodellet @lcveaesop @oofasleep @bye-bye-sunbird @yandere-romanticaa @boundinparchment @harmonysanreads @teabutmakeitazure @yandere-wishes @yanmaresu @nicebonescomrades @nimandu @lesanyanyas @moarar

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

ATSV Fun Fact!! - Mumbattan Cultural Details

Gayatri & Inspector Singh follow the Sikh Religion

Have you ever heard of Punjabi Sikhs?

If you don't know - Sikhism is a religion that originates in northern India, specifically Punjab.

The turban Gayatri's father wears - along with his last name 'Singh' implies that her father is most likely a Punjabi Sikh.

I notice this the first time watching ATSV and was like 'wow that's so cool :)'

It only hit me today that 'Oh wait I don't think a lot of people know about this very-specific, rarely-mentioned religion maybe i should say something,'

And because I LOVE yelling about world culture, LET'S GO!!!

[a SHORT essay where I explain the basics of Sikhism, a religion built on equality and justice. And details in The Singhs design, and exactly why Sikh Representation matters]

So What's Sikhism about?

Often mistaken for Muslims - Sikhs are actually a non-Abrahamic religion, with 20 million followers worldwide.

But even with so many visible practicing members, most people know very very little about this beautiful religion!

Sikhs believe in equality and unity - and defending the oppressed. Their book of faith, The Guru Granth Sahib Ji, is called 'Guru' for a reason - Sikhs see the book as not just a code of conduct, but as a living, breathing teacher for every practicioner;

From Wikipedia on Guru Granth Sahib: Sikhs since then [1708] have accepted the Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred scripture, as their eternal-living guru, as the embodiment of the ten Sikh Gurus, the highest religious and spiritual guide for Sikhs. It plays a central role in guiding the Sikh's way of life.

The Guru Granth Sahib is the spiritual leader of Sikhism, and it's treated as such.

That's why in Gurdwaras - their place of worship - it's treated as such, being clothed and held in ornate structure, constantly fanned throughout it's readings (the fan you can see in the left picture).

They believe that by following the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, they can cultivate compassion, peace, and harmony in their communities, while diminishing 'Mara' - concepts like hatred or violence.

Sikhs believe that every Sikh should revere themselves as champions of unity. And because of this many Sikhs have the same last name -

Kaur for women (Meaning Princess) and Singh for men (Meaning Lion).

Having the same last name also does away with the Indian caste system, making it another point of equality.

In ATSV Gayatri last name is Singh. However from my understanding, her name would most likely be Gayatri Kaur in reality.

I think they kept her last name as Singh as a deliberate choice to keep her initials as GS, like Gwen Stacy.

So is Gayatri Sikh?

Maybe - most likely.

But we can't be sure. Mainly because of her hair.

Gayatri has a short bob haircut, and while that might not seem like it matters, it does!

In Sikhism there are the '5K's - different aspects Sikhs wear to show their faith.

Notice the first one?

'Kesh' is the practice of leaving ones hair completely uncut. That's why you may see a lot of Sikh men with long, long beards!

And hence, the large turbans.

It's done as respect for God's creation - leaving it unaltered.

[Fun Fact! - Rastafarians, a Jamaican religion, also don't cut their hair for this reason. Think Bob Marley. Rastas call God - Jah]

So, Gayatri having short hair means she doesn't keep Kesh.

However, Sikh is a super accepting and open religion, and it's main focus is on acceptance of difference, not conformity - so she could entirely follow the faith without doing all of any of the 5Ks.

Also, if you're curious about the steel sword K - Kirpan, yes that's a thing!

Sikhs of all genders are encouraged to carry a small ceremonial blade with them.

Instead it's a symbol of the commitment to fighting for what's right - and defending those who cannot defend themselves.

A Kirpan can ONLY be used to defend the life of yourself or others, which is incredibly rare.

Why is this all so rad, cool, and important?

If you haven't noticed by now, Sikhism is a religion driven by justice. Not just in theory, but in really life as well.

That's why you may see many Sikh police officers and politicians, even here in the West. Most of them wearing the emblem on their turbans.

In fact, Canada has SO MANY Sikh politicians, that in 2019 they elected 18 of them.

For centuries Sikhs have been dedicated to justice, and developing systems of support, whether that be political involvement or feeding those in need.

The biggest Gurdwara (a place of Sikh worship) The Golden Temple feeds over 100,000 people A DAY.

For FREE.

It's a practice called Langar. A communal meal anyone can enjoy. And of course, Langar food is vegetarian.

Making Inspector Singh a Sikh - and showing him saving people and being warm to his daughter on screen is great representation for a community so often overlooked! Despite the fact they are over 20 million practicing Sikhs.

It's a great detail for Indian and Punjabi representation in specific. It accurate shows their beliefs and commitment towards helping others, no matter the cost.

And from what we can tell, this choice came later in development. We know this because ALL of his concept art shows him with a turban, not keeping Kesh.

It seems like someone later on down the line said 'Wait if his name is Singh I think he's Sikh and if he's Sikh then we're gonna have to redesign him and make that obvious oops'.

That, dear audience, is why you always have an Anthropologist in the writing room. Or some amateur anthropologist like me :)

-------------

I hope you enjoyed reading this, I really enjoyed writing it!! Sikhism is one of my favorite religions and if you have never heard anything from the Guru Granth Sahib I HIGHLY recommend it, it's very optimistic and compassionate. Sikhnet(.)com is also a great resource!

I have no idea if this will pique anyone's interest, but I hardly ever see Sikhs reflected in media and I know many many people may confuse them with Muslim, especially since many women Sikhs keep kesh and cover their hair as well.

But if you ever wanted to know the difference, here it is! If you read this far, thank you SO MUCH. And if you're a Sikh and reading this, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

As usual, here's a photo of Hobie for your travels.

BYE.

[etz-ashashiyot]

Chapter 4: Executed Jews

By Dara Horn, excerpted from People Love Dead Jews

ALA ZUSKIN PERELMAN AND I HAD BEEN IN TOUCH ONLINE before I finally met her in person, and I still cannot quite believe she exists. Years ago, I wrote a novel about Marc Chagall and the Yiddish-language artists whom he once knew in Russia, all of whom were eventually murdered by the Soviet regime. While researching the novel, I found myself sucked into the bizarre story of these people's exploitation and destruction: how the Soviet Union first welcomed these artists as exemplars of universal human ideals, then used them for its own purposes, and finally executed them. I named my main character after the executed Yiddish actor Benjamin Zuskin, a comic performer known for playing fools. After the book came out, I heard from Ala in an email written in halting English: "I am Benjamin Zuskin's daughter." That winter I was speaking at a literary conference in Israel, where Ala lived, and she and I arranged to meet. It was like meeting a character from a book.

My hosts had generously put me up with other writers in a beautiful stone house in Jerusalem. We were there during Hanukkah, the celebration of Jewish independence. On the first night of the holiday, I walked to Jerusalem's Old City and watched as people lit enormous Hanukkah torches at the Western Wall. I thought of my home in New Jersey, where in school growing up I sang fake English Hanukkah songs created by American music education companies at school Christmas concerts, with lyrics describing Hanukkah as being about "joy and peace and love." Joy and peace and love describe Hanukkah, a commemoration of an underdog military victory over a powerful empire, about as well as they describe the Fourth of July. I remembered challenging a chorus teacher about one such song, and being told that I was a poor sport for disliking joy and peace and love. (Imagine a "Christmas song" with lyrics celebrating Christmas, the holiday of freedom. Doesn't everyone like freedom? What pedant would reject such a song?) I sang those words in front of hundreds of people to satisfy my neighbors that my tradition was universal — meaning, just like theirs. The night before meeting Ala, I walked back to the house through the dense stone streets of the Old City's Jewish Quarter, where every home had a glass case by its door, displaying the holiday's oil lamps. It was strange to see those hundreds of glowing lights. They were like a shining announcement that this night of celebration was shared by all these strangers around me, that it was universal. The experience was so unfamiliar that I didn't know what to make of it.

The next morning, Ala knocked on the door of the stone house and sat down in its living room, with its view of the Old City. She was a small dark-haired woman whose perfect posture showed a firmness that belied her age. She looked at me and said in Hebrew, "I feel as if you knew my father, like you understood what he went through. How did you know?"

The answer to that question goes back several thousand years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The teenage boys who participated in competitive athletics in the gymnasium in Jerusalem 2,200 years ago had their circumcisions reversed, because otherwise they wouldn't have been allowed to play. In the Hellenistic empire that had conquered Judea, sports were sacred, the entry point to being a person who mattered, the ultimate height of cool — and sports, of course, were always played in the nude. As one can imagine, ancient genital surgery of this nature was excruciating and potentially fatal. But the boys did not want to miss out.

I learned this fun fact in seventh grade, from a Hebrew school teacher who was instructing me and my pubescent classmates about the Hanukkah story — about how Hellenistic tyranny gained a foothold in ancient Judea with the help of Jews who wanted to fit in. This teacher seemed overly jazzed to talk about penises with a bunch of adolescents, and I suspected he'd made the whole thing up. At home, I decided to fact-check. I pulled a dusty old book off my parents' shelf, Volume One of Heinrich Graetz's opus History of the Jews.

In nineteenth-century academic prose, Graetz explained how the leaders of Judea demonstrated their loyalty to the occupying Hellenistic empire by building a gymnasium and recruiting teenage athletes — only to discover that "in uncovering their bodies they could immediately be recognized as Judeans. But were they to take part in the Olympian games, and expose themselves to the mockery of Greek scoffers? Even this difficulty they evaded by undergoing a painful operation, so as to disguise the fact that they were Judeans." Their Zeus-worshipping overlords were not fooled. Within a few years, the regime outlawed not only circumcision but all of Jewish religious practice, and put to death anyone who didn't comply.

Sometime after that, the Maccabees showed up. That's the part of the story we usually hear.

Those ancient Jewish teenagers were on my mind that Hanukkah when Ala came to tell me about her father's terrifying life, because I sensed that something profound united them — something that doesn't match what we're usually taught about what bigotry looks or feels like. It doesn't involve "intolerance" or "persecution," at least not at first. Instead, it looks like the Jews themselves are choosing to reject their own traditions. It is a form of weaponized shame.

Two distinct patterns of antisemitism can be identified by the Jewish holidays that celebrate triumphs over them: Purim and Hanukkah. In the Purim version of antisemitism, exemplified by the Persian genocidal decrees in the biblical Book of Esther, the goal is openly stated and unambiguous: Kill all the Jews. In the Hanukkah version of antisemitism, whose appearances range from the Spanish Inquisition to the Soviet regime, the goal is still to eliminate Jewish civilization. But in the Hanukkah version, this goal could theoretically be accomplished simply by destroying Jewish civilization, while leaving the warm, de-Jewed bodies of its former practitioners intact.

For this reason, the Hanukkah version of antisemitism often employs Jews as its agents. It requires not dead Jews but cool Jews: those willing to give up whatever specific aspect of Jewish civilization is currently uncool. Of course, Judaism has always been uncool, going back to its origins as the planet's only monotheism, featuring a bossy and unsexy invisible God. Uncoolness is pretty much Judaism's brand, which is why cool people find it so threatening — and why Jews who are willing to become cool are absolutely necessary to Hanukkah antisemitism's success. These "converted" Jews are used to demonstrate the good intentions of the regime — which of course isn't antisemitic but merely requires that its Jews publicly flush thousands of years of Jewish civilization down the toilet in exchange for the worthy prize of not being treated like dirt, or not being murdered. For a few years. Maybe.

I wish I could tell the story of Ala's father concisely, compellingly, the way everyone prefers to hear about dead Jews. I regret to say that Benjamin Zuskin wasn't minding his own business and then randomly stuffed into a gas chamber, that his thirteen-year-old daughter did not sit in a closet writing an uplifting diary about the inherent goodness of humanity, that he did not leave behind sad-but-beautiful aphorisms pondering the absence of God while conveniently letting his fellow humans off the hook. He didn't even get crucified for his beliefs. Instead, he and his fellow Soviet Jewish artists — extraordinarily intelligent, creative, talented, and empathetic adults — were played for fools, falling into a slow-motion psychological horror story brimming with suspense and twisted self-blame. They were lured into a long game of appeasing and accommodating, giving up one inch after another of who they were in order to win that grand prize of being allowed to live.

Spoiler alert: they lost.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was in graduate school studying Yiddish literature, itself a rich vein of discussion about such impossible choices, when I became interested in Soviet Jewish artists like Ala's father. As I dug through library collections of early-twentieth-century Yiddish works, I came across a startling number of poetry books illustrated by Marc Chagall. I wondered if Chagall had known these Yiddish writers whose works he illustrated, and it turned out that he had. One of Chagall's first jobs as a young man was as an art teacher at a Jewish orphanage near Moscow, built for children orphaned by Russia's 1919-1920 civil war pogroms. This orphanage had a rather renowned faculty, populated by famous Yiddish writers who trained these traumatized children in the healing art of creativity.

It all sounded very lovely, until I noticed something else. That Chagall's art did not rely on a Jewish language — that it had, to use that insidious phrase, "universal appeal" — allowed him a chance to succeed as an artist in the West. The rest of the faculty, like Chagall, had also spent years in western Europe before the Russian revolution, but they chose to return to Russia because of the Soviet Union's policy of endorsing Yiddish as a "national Soviet language." In the 1920s and 30s, the USSR offered unprecedented material support to Yiddish culture, paying for Yiddish-language schools, theaters, publishing houses, and more, to the extent that there were Yiddish literary critics who were salaried by the Soviet government. This support led the major Yiddish novelist Dovid Bergelson to publish his landmark 1926 essay "Three Centers," about New York, Warsaw, and Moscow as centers of Yiddish-speaking culture, asking which city offered Yiddish writers the brightest prospects. His unequivocal answer was Moscow, a choice that brought him back to Russia the following year, where many other Jewish artists joined him.

But Soviet support for Jewish culture was part of a larger plan to brainwash and coerce national minorities into submitting to the Soviet regime — and for Jews, it came at a very specific price. From the beginning, the regime eliminated anything that celebrated Jewish "nationality" that didn't suit its needs. Jews were awesome, provided they weren't practicing Jewish religion, studying traditional Jewish texts, using Hebrew, or supporting Zionism. The Soviet Union thus pioneered a versatile gaslighting slogan, which it later spread through its client states in the developing world and which remains popular today: it was not antisemitic, merely anti-Zionist. (In the process of not being antisemitic and merely being anti-Zionist, the regime managed to persecute, imprison, torture, and murder thousands of Jews.) What's left of Jewish culture once you surgically remove religious practice, traditional texts, Hebrew, and Zionism? In the Soviet Empire, one answer was Yiddish, but Yiddish was also suspect for its supposedly backwards elements. Nearly 15 percent of its words came directly from biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, so Soviet Yiddish schools and publishers, under the guise of "simplifying" spelling, implemented a new and quite literally antisemitic spelling system that eliminated those words' Near Eastern roots. Another answer was "folklore" — music, visual art, theater, and other creative work reflecting Jewish life — but of course most of that cultural material was also deeply rooted in biblical and rabbinic sources, or reflected common religious practices like Jewish holidays and customs, so that was treacherous too.

No, what the regime required were Yiddish stories that showed how horrible traditional Jewish practice was, stories in which happy, enlightened Yiddish-speaking heroes rejected both religion and Zionism (which, aside from its modern political form, is also a fundamental feature of ancient Jewish texts and prayers traditionally recited at least three times daily). This de-Jewing process is clear from the repertoire of the government-sponsored Moscow State Yiddish Theater, which could only present or adapt Yiddish plays that denounced traditional Judaism as backward, bourgeois, corrupt, or even more explicitly — as in the many productions involving ghosts or graveyard scenes — as dead. As its actors would be, soon enough.

The Soviet Union's destruction of Jewish culture commenced, in a calculated move, with Jews positioned as the destroyers. It began with the Yevsektsiya, committees of Jewish Bolsheviks whose paid government jobs from 1918 through 1930 were to persecute, imprison, and occasionally murder Jews who participated in religious or Zionist institutions — categories that included everything from synagogues to sports clubs, all of which were shut down and their leaders either exiled or "purged." This went on, of course, until the regime purged the Yevsektsiya members themselves.

The pattern repeated in the 1940s. As sordid as the Yeveksiya chapter was, I found myself more intrigued by the undoing of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, a board of prominent Soviet Jewish artists and intellectuals established by Joseph Stalin in 1942 to drum up financial support from Jews overseas for the Soviet war effort. Two of the more prominent names on the JAC's roster of talent were Solomon Mikhoels, the director of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, and Ala's father Benjamin Zuskin, the theater's leading actor. After promoting these people during the war, Stalin decided these loyal Soviet Jews were no longer useful, and charged them all with treason. He had decided that this committee he himself created was in fact a secret Zionist cabal, designed to bring down the Soviet state. Mikhoels was murdered first, in a 1948 hit staged to look like a traffic accident. Nearly all the others — Zuskin and twelve more Jewish luminaries, including the novelist Dovid Bergelson, who had proclaimed Moscow as the center of the Yiddish future — were executed by firing squad on August 1952.

Just as the regime accused these Jewish artists and intellectuals of being too "nationalist" (read: Jewish), today's long hindsight makes it strangely tempting to read this history and accuse them of not being "nationalist" enough — that is, of being so foolishly committed to the Soviet regime that they were unable to see the writing on the wall. Many works on this subject have said as much. In Stalin's Secret Pogrom, the indispensable English translation of transcripts from the JAC "trial," Russia scholar Joshua Rubenstein concludes his lengthy introduction with the following:

As for the defendants at the trial, it is not clear what they believed about the system they each served. Their lives darkly embodied the tragedy of Soviet Jewry. A combination of revolutionary commitment and naive idealism had tied them to a system they could not renounce. Whatever doubts or misgivings they had, they kept to themselves, and served the Kremlin with the required enthusiasm. They were not dissidents. They were Jewish martyrs. They were also Soviet patriots. Stalin repaid their loyalty by destroying them.

This is completely true, and also completely unfair. The tragedy — even the term seems unjust, with its implied blaming of the victim — was not that these Soviet Jews sold their souls to the devil, though many clearly did. The tragedy was that integrity was never an option in the first place.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ala was almost thirteen years old when her father was arrested and until that moment she was immersed in the Soviet Yiddish artistic scene. Her mother was also an actor in the Moscow State Yiddish Theater; her family lived in the same building as the murdered theater director Solomon Mikhoels, and moved in the same circles as other Jewish actors and writers. After seeing her parents perform countless times, Ala had a front-row seat to the destruction of their world. She attended Mikhoel's state funeral, heard about the arrest of the brilliant Yiddish author Der Nister from an actor friend who witnessed it from her apartment across the hall, and was present when secret police ransacked her home in conjunction with her father's arrest. In her biography, The Travels of Benjamin Zuskin, she provides for her readers what she gave me that morning in Jerusalem: an emotional recounting, with the benefit of hindsight, of what it was really like to live through the Soviet Jewish nightmare.

It's as close as we can get, anyway. Her father Benjamin Zuskin's own thoughts on the topic are available only from state interrogations extracted under unknown tortures. (One typical interrogation document from his three and a half years in the notorious Lubyanka Prison announces that the day's interrogation lasted four hours, but the transcript is only half a page long — leaving to the imagination how the interrogator and interrogatee may have spent their time together. Suffice it to say that another JAC detainee didn't make it to trial alive.) His years in prison began when he was arrested in December of 1948 in a Moscow hospital room, where he was being treated for chronic insomnia brought on by the murder of his boss and career-long acting partner, Mikhoels; the secret police strapped him to a gurney and carted him to prison in his hospital gown while he was still sedated.

But in order to truly appreciate the loss here, one needs to know what was lost — to return to the world of the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, the author of Benjamin Zuskin's first role on the Yiddish stage, in a play fittingly titled It's a Lie!

Benjamin Zuskin's path to the Yiddish theater and later to the Soviet firing squad began in a shtetl comparable to those immortalized in Sholem Aleichem's work. Zuskin, a child from a traditional family who was exposed to theater only through traveling Yiddish troupes and clowning relatives, experienced that world's destruction: his native Lithuanian shtetl, Ponievezh, was among the many Jewish towns forcibly evacuated during the First World War, catapulting him and hundreds of thousands of other Jewish refugees into modernity. He landed in Penza, a city with professional Russian theater and Yiddish amateur troupes. In 1920, the Moscow State Yiddish Theater opened, and by 1921, Zuskin was starring alongside Mikhoels, the theater's leading light.

In the one acting class I have ever attended, I learned only one thing: acting isn't about pretending to be someone you aren't, but rather about emotional communication. Zuskin, who not only starred in most productions but also taught in the theater's acting school, embodied the concept. His very first audition was a one-man sketch he created, consisting of nothing more than a bumbling old tailor threading a needle — without words, costumes, or props. It became so popular that he performed it to entranced crowds for years. This physical artistry animated his every role. As one critic wrote, "Even the slightest breeze and he is already air-bound."

Zuskin specialized in playing figures like the Fool in King Lear — as his daughter puts it in her book, characters who "are supposed to make you laugh, but they have an additional dimension, and they arouse poignant reflections about the cruelty of the world." Discussing his favorite roles, Zuskin once explained that "my heart is captivated particularly by the image of the person who is derided and humiliated, but who loves life, even though he encounters obstacles placed before him through no fault of his own."

The first half of Ala's book seems to recount only triumphs. The theater's repertoire in its early years was largely adopted from classic Yiddish writers like Sholem Aleichem, I. L. Peretz, and Mendele Moykher Seforim. The book's title is drawn from Zuskin's most famous role: Senderl, the Sancho Panza figure in Mendele's Don Quixote-inspired work, Travels of Benjamin the Third, about a pair of shtetl idiots who set out for the Land of Israel and wind up walking around the block. These productions were artistically inventive, brilliantly acted, and played to packed houses both at home and on tour. Travels of Benjamin the Third, in a 1928 review typical of the play's reception, was lauded by the New York Times as "one of the most originally conceived and beautifully executed evenings in the modern theater."

One of the theater's landmark productions, I. L. Peretz's surrealist masterpiece At Night in the Old Marketplace, was first performed in 1925. The play, set in a graveyard, is a kind of carnival for the graveyard's gathered ghosts. Those who come back from the dead are misfits like drunks and prostitutes, and also specific figures from shtetl life - yeshiva idlers, synagogue beadles, and the like. Leading them all is a badkhn, or wedding jester — divided in this production into two mirror-characters played by Mikhoels and Zuskin — whose repeated chorus among the living corpses is "The dead will rise!" "Within this play there was something hidden, something with an ungraspable depth," Ala writes, and then relates how after a performance in Vienna, one theatergoer came backstage to tell the director that "the play had shaken him as something that went beyond all imagination." The theatergoer was Sigmund Freud.

As Ala traces the theater's trajectory toward doom, it becomes obvious why this performance so affected Freud. The production was a zombie story about the horrifying possibility of something supposedly dead (here, Jewish civilization) coming back to life. The play was written a generation earlier as a Romantic work, but in the Moscow production, it became a means of denigrating traditional Jewish life without mourning it. That fantasy of a culture's death as something compelling and even desirable is not merely reminiscent of Freud's death drive, but also reveals the self-destructive bargain implicit in the entire Soviet-sponsored Jewish enterprise. In her book, Ala beautifully captures this tension as she explains the badkhn's role: "He sends a double message: he denies the very existence of the vanishing shadow world, and simultaneously he mocks it, as if it really does exist."

This double message was at the heart of Benjamin Zuskin's work as a comic Soviet Yiddish actor, a position that required him to mock the traditional Jewish life he came from while also pretending that his art could exist without it. "The chance to make fun of the shtetl which has become a thing of the past charmed me," he claimed early on, but later, according to his daughter, he began to privately express misgivings. The theater's decision to stage King Lear as a way of elevating itself disturbed him, suggesting as it did that the Yiddish repertoire was inferior. His own integrity came from his deep devotion to yiddishkayt, a sense of essential and enduring Jewishness, no matter how stripped-down that identity had become. "With the sharp sense of belonging to everything Jewish, he was tormented by the theater forsaking its expression of this belonging," his daughter writes. Even so, "no, he could not allow himself to oppose the Soviet regime even in his thoughts, the regime that gave him his own theater, but 'the heart and the wit do not meet.'"

In Ala's memory, her father differed from his director, partner, and occasional rival, Mikhoels, in his complete disinterest in politics. Mikhoels was a public figure as well as performer, and his leadership of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, while no more voluntary than any public act in a totalitarian state, was a role he played with gusto, traveling to America in 1943 and speaking to thousands of American Jews to raise money for the Red Army in their battle against the Nazis. Zuskin, on the other hand, was on the JAC roster, but seems to have continued playing the fool. According to both his daughter and his trial testimony, his role in the JAC was almost identical to his role on a Moscow municipal council, limited to playing chess in the back of the room during meetings.

In Jerusalem, Ala told me that her father was "a pure soul." "He had no interest in politics, only in his art," she said, describing his acting style as both classic and contemporary, praised by critics for its timeless qualities that are still evident today in his film work. But his talent was the most nuanced and sophisticated thing about him. Offstage, he was, as she put it in Hebrew, a "tam" — a biblical term sometimes translated as fool or simpleton, but which really means an innocent. (It is the first adjective used to describe the title character in the Book of Job.) It is true that in trial transcripts, Zuskin comes out looking better than many of his co-defendants by playing dumb instead of pointing fingers. But was this ignorance, or a wise acceptance of the futility of trying to save his skin? As King Lear's Fool put it, "They'll have me whipp'd for speaking true; thou'lt have me whipp'd for holding my peace." Reflecting on her father's role as a fool named Pinia in a popular film, Ala writes in her book, "When I imagine the moment when my father heard his death sentence, I see Pinia in close-up . . . his shoulders slumped, despair in his appearance. I hear the tone that cannot be imitated in his last line in the film — and perhaps also the last line in his life? — 'I don't understand anything.'"

Yet it is clear that Zuskin deeply understood how impossible his situation was. In one of the book's more disturbing moments, Ala describes him rehearsing for one of his landmark roles, that of the comic actor Hotsmakh in Sholem Aleichem's Wandering Stars, a work whose subject is the Yiddish theater. He had played the role before, but this production was going up in the wake of Mikhoel's murder. Zuskin was already among the hunted, and he knew it. As Ala writes:

One morning — already after the murder of Mikhoels — I saw my father pacing the room and memorizing the words of Hotsmakh's role. Suddenly, in a gesture revealing a hopeless anguish, Father actually threw himself at me, hugged me, pressed me to his heart, and together with me, continued to pace the room and to memorize the words of the role. That evening I saw the performance . . . "The doctors say that I need rest, air, and the sea . . . For what . . . without the theater?" [Hotsmakh asks], he winds the scarf around his neck — as though it were a noose. For my father, I think those words of Hotsmakh were like the motif of the role and — I think — of his own life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Describing the charges levied against Zuskin and his peers is a degrading exercise, for doing so makes it seem as though these charges are worth considering. They are not. It is at this point that Hanukkah antisemitism transformed, as it inevitably does, into Purim antisemitism. Here Ala offers what hundreds of pages of state archives can't, describing the impending horror of the noose around one's neck.

Her father stopped sleeping, began receiving anonymous threats, and saw that he was being watched. No conversation was safe. When a visitor from Poland waited near his apartment building to give him news of his older daughter Tamara (who was then living in Warsaw), Zuskin instructed the man to walk behind him while speaking to him and then to switch directions, so as to avoid notice. When the man asked Zuskin what he wanted to tell his daughter, Zuskin "approached the guest so closely that there was no space between them, and whispered in Yiddish, 'Tell her that the ground is burning beneath my feet.'" It is true that no one can know what Zuskin or any of the other defendants really believed about the Soviet system they served. It is also true — and far more devastating — that their beliefs were utterly irrelevant.

Ala and her mother were exiled to Kazakhstan after her father's arrest, and learned of his execution only when they were allowed to return to Moscow in 1955. By then, he had already been dead for three years.

In Jerusalem that morning, Ala told me, in a sudden private moment of anger and candor, that the Soviet Union's treatment of the Jews was worse than Nazi Germany's. I tried to argue, but she shut me up. Obviously the Nazi atrocities against Jews were incomparable, a fact Ala later acknowledged in a calmer mood. But over four generations, the Soviet regime forced Jews to participate in and internalize their own humiliation - and in that way, Ala suggested, they destroyed far more souls. And they never, ever, paid for it.

"They never had a Nuremberg," Ala told me that day, with a quiet fury. "They never acknowledged the evil of what they did. The Nazis were open about what they were doing, but the Soviets pretended. They lured the Jews in, they baited them with support and recognition, they used them, they tricked them, and then they killed them. It was a trap. And no one knows about it, even now. People know about the Holocaust, but not this. Even here in Israel, people don't know. How did you know?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That evening I went out to the Old City again, to watch the torches being lit at the Western Wall for the second night of Hanukkah. I walked once more through the Jewish Quarter, where the oil lamps, now each bearing one additional flame, were displayed outside every home, following the tradition to publicize the Hanukkah miracle — not merely the legendary long-lasting oil, but the miracle of military and spiritual victory over a coercive empire, the freedom to be uncool, the freedom not to pretend. Somewhere nearby, deep underground, lay the ruins of the gymnasium where de-circumcised Jewish boys once performed naked before approving crowds, stripped of their integrity and left with their private pain. I thought of Benjamin Zuskin performing as the dead wedding jester, proclaiming, "The dead will rise!" and then performing again in a "superior" play, as King Lear's Fool. I thought of the ground burning beneath his feet. I thought of his daughter, Ala, now an old woman, walking through Jerusalem.

I am not a sentimental person. As I returned to the stone house that night, along the streets lit by oil lamps, I was surprised to find myself crying.

[schoenpepper]

Intro: You choose the emerald ring and bracelet.

Warnings: bad grammar, awful writing, photos aren't mine, mentions of death ig

A/N: Malleus is just so male-lead-coded it's actually insane. Like, crazy powers? Pretty face? Unique fantasy race? Green flag???

Masterlist

You pick up the emerald bracelet and ring set. You would hate to let Malleus down, as he's genuinely one of the sweetest people you've ever met. Not to mention, you really do enjoy spending time with him, so being at the ball shouldn't be any different for how you two usually act around each other. The moment you step inside the lavishly decorated ballroom, the handsome prince makes his way to you, seemingly just short of teleporting in his effort to get to you faster. "Child of Man, I am very much pleased that you have accepted my invitation." Malleus says happily, holding out his hand.

"Of course. Thank you for inviting me." You take his hand and walk with him slowly to the center of the ballroom.

"I must say, you look absolutely marvelous tonight. Not that you don't look marvelous normally. You look incredible every day."

"Thank you." You chuckle. "Malleus."

He seems slightly shocked at the first time you've ever used his real name. "Y/N." His voice is soft when he returns the favor. He looks at the accessory on your hand, tracing his finger over it. When the orchestra begins a new song, he leads a solemn waltz with his eyes never leaving yours. You fall into a comfortable silence with him. With every turn you make in his arms, the background fades more and more, but the color of his eyes seem to glow sharper and you're helplessly drawn to him. This isn't good. You could've lived with ignoring your 'avoid the capture targets' plan, but breaking the most sacred rule of all? It's ridiculous. You could be in danger. You could die.

His hand squeezes yours.

The villain died in so many different ways depending on who the main characters chose because that stupid villain fell in love. And yes, you're technically friends with all the male leads, but who's to say that the world won't suddenly force everyone to play the role they were supposed to? There's still so much you don't know about this world, or why you're even here. Falling in love with Malleus Draconia of all people is so, so very dangerous.

He sways you as the dance comes to a halt.

You look into his eyes again.

You should stop. You should tell him that you can no longer be friends with him. Crawl back into your shell and be cautious, be safe. Love your life more than you love this man you've only known for a year.

You hold his hand tighter.

"Malleus. I love you."

Try Again?

[insomniadreamzz]

Hellooo!!! So between all the angst and smut here there will be something funny to (hopefully) laugh at so I have a bit of variety here.

(Maybe I watched too much Brooklyn 99 lately 😂)

———

A fun story about Jinx x Fem!Reader in modern AU. Reader is a cop in this fic.

The Cop and the Criminal

You were sitting at the office, doing some documentation, focused on your work before you could hear your coworker shouting at you.

„Hey!!! (Y/N)!! Look what I can do.“ Your fave coworker Jayce wanted your attention. As much as you liked him, he was a goof. If he wanted to show you something then it can’t be something serious. You sigh as you turned you attention towards him, Jayce sat in his chair, throwing a peanut in the air and catching it with his mouth. Proudly chewing on it. „YES! Got it!“

Before you could even answer your other coworker Sevika rolled her eyes. „Great. I work with idiots.“ She mentioned and you just sat there in disbelief.

„What? I bet you can’t do that.“ Jayce told Sevika, making her scoff. „I don’t even want to do that.“ Her voice low, her face showing no emotions.

„(Y/N), Jayce. In my office.“ Your captain Silco said as he walked through the main office to his own.

„Yes sir!“ You and Jayce answered at the same time, following Silco. „What a good time to be alive.“ Sevika mumbled sarcastically, your other older coworker Vander placing his hand on her shoulder, chuckling. „Come on. They aren’t that bad. A little fun can relieve stress.“

…

„Jayce I want you and (Y/N) to go to a mission together with Sevika. The city has a very huge problem. The problem is called Jinx.“ Silco said, holding up a wanted poster that was created to find her.

„Woah she looks like she didn’t sleep for a year or so. And got insane because of being sleep deprived.“ Jayce laughed at the picture but you looked at it with a serious expression. The drawing on the wanted poster was…interesting. You tried to figure out where that person could hide before Silco interrupted your thoughts.

„Nice try Jayce but that’s not funny. She is dsngerous. She is robbing and bombing places, not caring if she kills people while doing that. So you should be careful. We got hints to where her hideout could be, I want you to check it out. If you could find her and arrest her, that would make me cery happy.“ Silco said with a straight face.

„Yeaaa…of course and Sevika will be happy too.“ You mumbled, knowing Sevika can’t stand Jayce but that’s only because he is not funny but thinks he is.

You both got out of Silco’s office to the main one, Jayce having a bright smile on his face as he rushed to Sevika. „Yo Sev! Me, you and (Y/N) will go to a mission together!“ He cheered and Sevika only stared at him, not moving a single muscle in her face. „Wonderful.“ She sighed, getting up from her chair. „You got the information, I will take us there. I am gonna drive.“ She went on, making you think about saying something nice. „Well we could make a good team. I am happy to go to that mission.“ You said, making Sevika look at you.

„Yes very cool. Can‘t you see how happy I am? I could die of happiness.“ Sevika mentioned with a straight face.

„Oookay then let’s go.“ You said, a bit intimidated by the look on her face so you turned to leave the building together with them.

…

You three were on the way to the said spot where Jinx could hide, Jayce in the back, babbling stuff about various things and giggling at his own jokes, Sevika scoffing. „Can this clown shut up for at least five minutes…“ She grumbled under her breath.

You were too much focused to guide Sevika the way so you barely even listened to what Jayce was talking about, thankfully you soon got to the said spot, it was a abandoned place.

„That must be it.“ You said as all of you got out the car, walking closer to the old abandoned building in front of you, Sevika grabbing your arm to pull you back, making you screech, she sacred you. „Sev-…“ You wanted to complain but she shushed you. „Shh! There are bombs everywhere.“ She said with a low voice, making you look down at the ground to see these bombs all over the place. Someone really didn’t want visitors.

„Those look funny tho.“ Jayce said, looking at the bombs which looked like monkeys. „Yea that stupid idea could be yours.“ Sevika mocked him again and you just shrugged.

„Alright guys don’t argue we are in the middle of a mission.“ You finally said and then there was silence between them. All three of you parted ways to find Jinx more quicker, connected by your walkie talkies.

You made it into the building, walking along a hallway, flinching when you heard a laughter, your hand clinging around your gun. „There she is…“ You whispered to yourself, walking into the direction where the laughing came from, stepping into a room which was filled with weapons, bombs and…drawings?

You slowly stepped forward until a rope clung around your foot, pulling you up so you were hanging there upside down, letting out a shriek. „Ah what the fuck?!“ You wiggle, trying to free yourself, your walkie talkie falling to the ground, making you groan in annoyance. „Oh shit!“ You cursed under your breath before the same laughter as before got your attention.

„Hehe…there just ran a little rat into my trap.“ The voice said, a figure slowly appearing out if the shadows, pink eyes literally glowing in the dark until you saw it clearer.

„P-Police! Stop right where you are!“ You shouted and pount your gun towards her but before you could even blink she shot it out of your hands. „Dammit!“ You wiggled again in your spot, trying to free yourself. „Look how cute you look. Hanging upside down, the little wiggles and your red face.“ Jinx cooed, squishing your cheeks, making you blush to make your face even more redder. „I am red because my blood is flowing into my head! Let me go!“ You complained with a groan, making the blue haired woman chuckle.

„Why would I let a police officer go? I am not dumb. So what should I do with you?? Bombs? Gun? Knife? What do you want me to use?“ She tilted her head, looking right into her eyes. You wondering why she had to be so damn beautiful, making you feel embarrassed now that you got trapped. You felt like a idiot.

„Jinx! Please let me down my head is gonna explode!“ You whine out, making the others eyes widen in surprise. „You know my name?“ She asked you, circling you like a animal it’s prey.

„Ugh! Of course I do now get me down here!“ You couldn’t believe it, how can she be like that. Actually no…she is a criminal of course she is behaving like that. „Mhh…but you look cute pouting.“ She kept on teasing you, now standing in front of your face now, cupping your cheeks. „You’re so cute I want to kiss you.“ Jinx didn’t let go of your cheeks as she placed her lips on yours, kissing you which made your heart flutter.

Just shortly after, you heard a shot and just like the light Jinx was away again. She really could move very fast, making you wonder where she went but to your luck you see Sevika and Jayce being there. „You kissed Jinx??! Wow!“ Jayce shouted and you just couldn’t believe it either. „I-…she kissed me!“ You complained. „Was it good?“ He wiggled his eyebrows, making you blush even more. „Jayce! Get Jinx I am gonna get (Y/N) down, don’t fuck it up.“ Sevika yelled at him before walking towards you and finally getting you out of this trap. „You okay?“ She asked.

„Ugh…my head…I think my blood needs to go back into my limbs again before I can do anything.“ You answered, holding your head. „Yeah and Jayce needs more in his brain.“ The older woman scoffed. You both made our way to help Jayce with Jinx, taking your gun from the ground before you rushed into the direction where they went.

Finally you and the others catched up on Jinx, having her now trapped since there was no way out of here, Jinx pressing her back against the wall as she held up both her hands, looking at you with puppy eyes. „Please…don’t shoot. I love you.“ She spoke to you and you choked on your own spit. „Damn (Y/N)! A few seconds in and you already got you a girl!“ Jayce had to say it and you were still frozen in confusion.

„You dumbasses!! That’s a trick! Put your hands behind your back or I will shoot!“ Sevika shouted, gritting her teeth together in annoyance.

Suddenly Jinx let a bomb fall down, the ticking making you panick deep inside. „Fuck…run!“ You screamed and all of you ran away, not wanting to die yet.

„Woah! This crazy woman risked bimbing herself!“ Jayce couldn’t believe it and neither did you and Sevika. „Crazy bitch…“ Sevika grumbled, the dust in the air making it hard to see, all you could feel was was a hand on your mouth, keeping you silent as soft lips touched your ear, making you shiver before a familiar voice spoke to you. „Shhh…you will all fall asleep…and I will take you with me.“ Jinx said before putting on a mask and you felt all dizzy, passing out.

———

THE END OR IS IT? Idk lemme know if you like this kind of fic. A little crack, fun but also a bit of seriousness. Lemme know in the comments if you enjoyed it and want a part two with the same humour but also a bit of serious content in it and maybe a little smut? If you enjoyed I will make a part two ❤️

[lanaroff]

Unwanted- Part 5

Paring: Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Summary: Y/N is an enhanced SHIELD agent who is forced to work with the Avengers. What happens when they discover that she’s not alone?

A/N: I actually don't know where this series is going. But I have so many ideas. Feels good to be back!

"So how does it work?" Peter asked while he was playing with his fingers looking around.

"How does what works?" You confusingly asked without taking your eyes off the road.

"The thing with the alien, you know V..."He stared saying. However, he was cut by the sound of the breaks stopping abruptly the car.

"Don't" You said sighting. "Don't say it's name when I'm driving. We trained it to come out at the mention of its name. You don't want to see it crashing the car, do you?"

The young boys eyes were full of both wonder and fear. You didn't own him an explanation about why the name should not be mentioned under certain circumstances, but you knew what kind of kid he was, and how talkative he could be.

"Sorry, Miss Y/L/N. I didn't know." He said it with an apologetic look on his face.

The ride back to your apartment was normal. You were aware that he was late for school, and probably would end up in detention for it. But you both agreed to go to your apartment first if he could go on the passenger seat right next to yours.

After a long, long, long trip, where Peter talked about his suit, his friends, his projects, how cool Stark was, and how cool working with the Avengers was, you finally made it out to your apartment. Sure, the trip wasn't thaaat long, but to you it felt like ages.

"Wait here, I'll be right back." You said as you walked inside your apartment.

You enter your office looking for your safe box. You knew that maybe leaving important files was not the best thing, so you were more than in a hurry to find them. Once you stood in front of the box, you entered the password and opened it. As you took your files, you heard steps coming from your living room. Immediately you turn to Venom and prepare yourself in case you needed to kill someone.

However, the moment you stood foot in the other room, a loud sound stunned you, and suddenly the feared creature was no longer in control. Turning yourself back, you dropped to your knees and cried the pain in your head. You were fighting to keep yourself conscious; you couldn't give up. As you were about to stand on your feet, someone pushed you back to the floor.

"You know, we were expecting it to be more difficult. I guess you are just weak." A man that stood in front of you stared saying. "You are a hard fish to catch, let me give you that."

"Go. Fuck. Yourself." You said between groans. Your head was killing you, but your mind was too busy thinking about how to get out of there.

"Oh yeah, I will. After I get paid for delivering you to the boss." He said between laughs.

How did these people knew about Venom's weakness? Only you and some man at SHIELD knew about it, as it was supposed to be confidential information. Only you, Fury, Natasha, Hill, and...

"Rumblow." You said, looking straight into the man's eyes.

As you waited for the main man to give you any kind of confirmation that in deed it was Rumlow behind it, another man came into the room.

"Sir, we found a kid trying to enter the apartment. What do we do with him?" He said as a brunette man followed him with a sacred Peter Parker.

Peter's head was being held by the man's arm, and a gun was being pressed on his skull. You immediately tried to stand on your two feet; however, your body betrayed you, making you fall once again.

"Kill him." He said, as he saw your reaction upon seeing Peter being held. You could let the kid die; otherwise, you were dead. They will never forget you if Peter dies. How would Wanda look at you after realizing that it was your fault?

"NO!" You screamed as you finally pulled your body out of the ground to tackle the man standing in front of you. "PETER RUN NOW!"

And he did as you said. Peter quickly used his strength to pull himself out of the man's arms to run towards you. Immediately you stood up and grabbed Peter so he was behind you.

"Listen to me carefully, Peter. I'm going to need you to run as fast as you can. Did you hear me?" You said it without taking your eyes off the intruders.

"But Miss..."

"No. They can't know what you are capable of doing. Now do what I say and leave. Don't look back; don't come to get me; just run and find Stark." You finished whispering so only he could listen to what you were saying.

The truth was that you knew that Peter could take them down. But if these people wanted to take you to where Rumblow was, then you were more than eager to let yourself be taken.

With a nod that confirmed you that he understood his assignment, Peter ran as fast as he could towards the living room window. Guns were fired at him while you stopped one of Rumblow's men to follow him. As soon as he reached the window, he jumped, and you were once again on the living floor in pain. But relived knowing that he was no longer there.

"You bitch! You are going to regret that" Was the last thing that you heard as you were hit with the back of a gun, leaving you unconscious.

You woke up really hot. And not in the nice way. Your body felt as if you were on fire, as in you were being burned from the inside to the outside. The moment you opened your eyes, you saw yourself chained to a stretcher, and the heat came from right underneath it.

"Rise and shine." You heard a voice saying. Immediately you clench your jaw as you recognize who's voice was.

"You know, you should've told me that you had a sunbed. I would've wore my bikini." You said spitting his face.

"Keep that attitude, and you know how it will end." Romblow said wapping his face.

"I'm counting on it, dumbass." You said with a big smile on your face.

The truth was, you loved it. Not the burning pain that you were feeling. But being so close to Rublow. Knowing that he actually was scared. Because boy, you had all the time in the world, but he? He knew the clock was ticking and that he had a few hours before S.H.I.E.L.D. would know your location.

"I could kill you right here right now." The man in front of you said grabing you by the hair.

"I know, but she won't allow you, will she? You are scared of her, I can see it." You replied.

"You are right. But that's the thing. I'm not going to kill you. Nah!" He said as he walked next to a table full of surgical instruments. "I'm going to destroy every hope you have of taking down Hydra." He grabbed a scalpel with one hand and, with the other, grabbed the back of your head. "I'm going to kill your new friends, so you have no one." He said while pressing the blade down your head hard enough to make you bleed but not enough to cut you too deep. "And after that, I'm going to free it, and then they will see you as their threat. And when you realize that you are alone and hopeless, then I will take you to HER. She can't wait to see you and continue with the work she started. You will be all hers!"

"Fuck you!" Was all you dared to say. You couldn't go back to her. You had come so far to be back at that place. Sure, you hated S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avangers, but deep down you knew that they were the only path to revenge. You needed them; you needed Venom. And he knew it.

"Bring Dr. Ackermann. Now!" Romblow said to one of his soldiers.

Back at the compound, the things were not better. Peter had come burst through the door screaming for help, alarming the whole team.

"Hey kid, slow down, what happened?" Tony asked him.

"It's... um... It's miss Y/L/N... We were at her place, and some guys came over, and they... um, they took her. She is gone." He said

The team shared the same worrying expression. You were supposed to take Peter to school; how could something like that happen? But most important, who would do something like that?

"What do you mean she is gone Peter?" Natasha asked.

"They had this device that was emitting some sound that hurt her. And she couldn't move. She asked me to come to you guys. We need to help her." Peter said. Upon hearing what Peter said, Natasha sent him with Bruce to the medbay to see if he had any injuries.

"You know something, don't you?" Wanda asked the spy. She knew something bad had happened. Maybe something related to your hatred thowars Hydra? She didn't know. All she knew was that she had to help you, just like you did with her.

"Y/N has a bomb in her head." Natasha said. The team were left speechless. Wanda couldn't comprehend why. Why would you have that on you? You were not a bad person; she was sure of that. You just needed someone to take care of you. Why would someone put that device on your head?

"What do you mean?" Tony asked.

"When S.H.I.E.L.D. got their hands on Y/N, she was unstable. She couldn't control Venom, in fact, it controlled her. So Fury decided that the best thing to do was to build a device that could control Venom, since she couldn't do it. It turns out that loud sounds and fire are one of it's weaknesses. They built a device that emits piercing sounds straight to her brain." Natasha explained.

Inmediatly, Wanda understood the events of the first night that she encountered the alien. That ringing noise that she heard, the way you twisted in pain, how Venom froze. You were just trying to protect her, and in doing so, you were hurting yourself.

"Okay, and what does this have to do with the bomb?" Bucky asked.

"One time while we were training, she lost control of her body to Venom. It was a disaster; four agents died that day. Venom just tear them apart. So she asked Fury to put a bomb in her head, so if she ever loses control again, she will eliminate Venom before it harms anyone."

"And by that, you mean that'she will eliminate herself'?". Sam asked. As soon as those words left Sam's mouth, Wanda had to leave the room. She just felt like it was too much for her. She felt nauseous.

She had to get out of there.

Wanda run to your room. It was the first time since the incident that she actually got to see it. It was almost empty. There was nothing that really reminded her of you. And that showed her how little she knew you. When she first came to the Avengers Towel, she felt lost. She had just lost Pietro, and she was all alone. Like you. You both had lost so much. She was determined to help you. She wanted to help you. Who knows, maybe one day you two could grow up and be friends, she thought. All she knew was that she couldn't leave you like that.

She came back to where she had left her teamates with another set of thoughts. "What's the plan?" Wanda said.

"I just talked to Fury; he has her location. She has a tracker, just in case something like this happens" Natasha said.

"Alright team, suit up." Said Steve.

[numberonetacostan]

ONE HEADCANON FOR EVERY II CHARACTER!

Hello everyone!!!!!^^ For a little holiday season special, I’ve typed out a little headcanon for every character!!! By character I mean contestants + host + assistants!!!!! Sorry to all the Nick Le fans out there, he is not included. Since everyone is here, there are characters I may not know as well as my main roster, so if I get anything like, objectively wrong, feel free to let me know!!!^^ Please enjoy!!! (ﾉ´ヮ`)ﾉ*: ･ﾟ

Apple- Her favorite song is Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan. She doesn’t really understand the lyrics but she really likes ponies!!!! I also think she’d start misspelling her name as “Appell” pretty often after she finds the song. 

Balloon- The first thing Suitcase does with her prize money is buy him a poetry book. He is so very moved by this and writes her dozens of poems with various styles he sees in the book within a few days. He’d read from the book and his own works to Suitcase every night before they go to bed. Some others could join in for a nice bedtime story :). 

Baseball- Once, while the hotel was under construction, Baseball fell down the stairs. And then kept rolling. And rolling. And bouncing. And rolling some more. Overall it set construction back two weeks and Paintbrush broke their leg trying to help stop him. Baseball was banned from the hotel until the elevators were finished. 

Bomb- He can’t eat spicy food. As in he’s banned from eating spicy food. If he gets too hot, he can accidentally set himself off, so despite his claim that he has a great spice tolerance, he is not allowed anywhere near the hot sauce. He doesn’t complain about the ban anymore post-canon, too risky, yeah? 

Bow- She watches so very many makeup tutorials, but being a ghost, can’t practice any of it on herself. That is, unless she possesses someone, like Marsh who would be very easy to put makeup on relative to other objects!!! She’d probably get pretty good at it, after some time, and Marsh would have some lovely new eyeshadow looks every day! 

Knife- He has a longer ghost tail than Dough and Bow do, so I propose him wrapping said tail around people and things he likes!!! Wraps around Pickle when they’re standing next to each other, wraps around Suitcase’s handle when they’re together, etc.!!! He’d get rather flustered if anyone called him out on it. 

Lightbulb- Gives incredible hugs. Incredible. How does an object made of glass and metal give such cuddly, warm hugs? Nobody knows. Sometimes she’ll turn herself on during the hug to make it extra warm!! As long as the person she’s hugging closes their eyes, it really elevates the already sacred experience of a Lightbulb hug. Luckily for everyone else, she is always happy to give one!^^

Marshmallow- She’s still pyrophobic after having been burnt all those years ago. As a very flammable marshmallow, fire would be scary to her anyways, but after having been roasted it’s a whole other story. She’d rather freeze than get close to a fire, but that’s not a problem since there’s a certain fruit always willing to warm her up with a hug <3!!

Nickel- He became very, very, very nervous to give his apology to Suitcase after she blew up Cobs and ate his corpse. He was planning to apologize either way, but clearly Suitcase could absolutely obliterate him if she wanted to do so, which means this apology has to be quite good or else. He has a serious amount of respect for her now. An upgrade, I’d say. 

OJ- His favorite Pokémon is Charizard. It’s orange, it’s very popular, OJ loves it. I know Justin has made a list of the contestant’s favorite Pokemon, but I have not read it in a while so Charizard it is!!!

Paintbrush- Experiments a lot with their image after season 3, mostly by dyeing their bristles with paint!!! Lightbulb helps :3!!! And by helps I mean makes it silly and very fun. Maybe she puts a little dot between Painty’s eyes to give them a “nose”. I think they’d try a solid color first, then maybe a fade, and eventually dye the nonbinary flag into their hair!!! They slay it of course. 

Paper- Pickle once wrote “Property of OJ” on Paper’s back and he didn’t notice for three days. No one told him it was there. When he asked everyone why in the world they would not inform him they said it was because they all thought OJ had written it and he was keeping it because he liked it. OJ did not know why Paper avoided eye contact with him for a week that one time but he did not like it. 

Pepper- Hotel OJ head chef. Yeah you heard me. Let me cook by letting her cook!! Salt wouldn’t like cooking, too much work, so this is something Pepper could enjoy on her own!! And it would be the sole reason that OJ has not yet kicked Salt out of the hotel- if he does than Pepper might be too sad to cook, and with the depressingly low amount of hotel residents that can make food, and the even smaller amount who are willing to make enough food for everyone, they need her. And, if Payjay help out, they can spend more time with her and get to know and enjoy her presence without Salt ruining it!

Pickle- With some help from Tea Kettle and Pepper, he makes Knife a new Dora doll post-finale, since it vanished with the rest of the stuff made by MeLife. He lets Knife possess him if he wants to hug the doll, but it also gets possessed by Knife so he can hug Pickle. Ah shit sorry my Knickle got all over the headcanon dang it. 

Salt- I headcanon her as the only cisgender, straight, alloromantic (I think that’s the right term?) member of the cast. Basically the only one who isn’t queer at all. But uh an actual headcanon for the ~60 or so Salt fans out there, both she and Pepper sleep with those little hair bonnets on to keep their salt and pepper from falling out of their heads in their sleep. 

Taco- This one is fitting for the winter season!! Taco is afraid of snow. Like, straight up terrified. I think she would grab a bunch of blankets and hide in the vents of the mansion whenever it snows, so she can be inside of the inside, as far and safe from the snow as she can be!! Having been homeless for years, she’s had some miserable experiences with hypothermia after it snows, and now that she has a home to live in, she’ll be staying inside until all the snow has melted. 

Mephone- I think he should have a pet bug post-canon. A little beetle or something that just chills on his head and feasts on the many crumbs he gets on himself while he eats. An intelligent one, like Baxter!!! Since we know Mephone will be stepping up into the more ‘big brother’ sort of role for 3GS, I think the bug would be a good outlet for Mephone to talk about his more intense feelings, specifically revolving around Mepad and the contestants. I also think, following his very creative naming of the contestants, the bug would be named Buggy. 

Box- I think she would be an insomniac. After years and years of living in an empty, timeless void-space thing, she’d have a lot of trouble getting to sleep!! She’d definitely need the whole works, warm milk, cheese, lullabies, etc., etc., just to get to sleep, and even then she probably wouldn’t sleep for very long. A lot of nightmares on this one, yeah? 

Cheesy- I think he’d actually quite enjoy eating cheese, as long as it’s not a chunk like he is. He’ll eat nachos, pizza, mozzarella sticks, grilled cheese, etc., etc., but he will not eat cheese cubes. He’d make approximately 5 cannibal jokes every time he does this, and this average goes up to 8 if Pickle is around. 

Cherries- They give Toilet their old Mepad mask post-canon, to try and make him feel better. Toilet might hang out with them a bit more after this- they can do some drawing together!! The more prank-buddies, the merrier, yeah? 

Dough- He eventually did get the recording of Bow saying that he was her brother!! Was it a cut-off version of her denying it yet again (though this time more playfully than anything)? Yes. Does that make him any less happy about having it? No. 

Fan- Out of everyone, he’s the most upset about II ending, and wants to find a new special interest!! He’d try a whole bunch of things, games, music, movies, TV shows, art, and I think it would be funny if he settled on the ii-universe equivalent of Survivor, since it was such a big inspiration for II!! He’d also occupy himself with being very interested in whatever Test Tube is doing and cheering her on!!! Also being a good Dad to Bot!!^^

Microphone- Has, on occasion, accidentally had her volume button pressed in her sleep and woke not only herself but everyone in the vicinity up with her snoring. The first time it happens post-canon it takes her a half-hour to get a very startled and scared but very sleepy and confused Taco to come out from her hiding spot under the bed. 

Soap- Her soap is french vanilla and rose scented!!! She’d find her own scent rather pleasant, yeah? I think being empty for her would have a similar effect on her as it does on objects like OJ and Test Tube, though if she’s in a real pinch she will use her own soap to get clean!! Letting someone use her soap would be a sweet gesture of love/appreciation from her!!!

Suitcase- Balloon would write her a lot of poems once they’re back together post-canon, and she’d keep them all inside of her!! She’d keep a lot of special little gifts from important people inside of her. The stone that Knife set beside her the first time they spoke on the docks, a dried flower bracelet from Box, whatever suits her fancy! (Get it? Ge- ‘cause she’s a suitcase? okay ill leave).

Test Tube- I think she would make phones for everyone post-canon!!!^^ It’s a big island, yeah? And they really need to be able to contact each other in case of emergency, with them being able to truly die now. She could make a functioning rocket out of a vending machine, I fully believe she could make however-many functioning phones out of what she can find on the island. (Or even better, Mepple HQ. I think they all should loot it.)

Tissues- He likes coding :) I personally hate coding, because I sucked at it in school and never want to look at one of those evil “easy kids coding” websites ever again. HOWEVER coding is something he could still do while he’s feeling sick, most of the time!! And we have quite a few gamers living in the hotel, so it would be a great way for him to connect with others!!!

Trophy- He always enjoyed photography as a hobby, but very much threw himself into it after being freed from the elimination closet. After months of seeing nothing but the snotty closet walls, he had a lot more appreciation for scenic and natural photographs. He’d hang a lot of them on the wall of his room to look at as he sleeps, since the rooms don’t have windows. 

Yin-Yang- This one is from my partner @galacticrain!! Because I consider them my resident yin-yang expert^^ Yang isn’t actually gluten free, like he says in season 2 episode 5, he just knew that Yin would confess to the eating of Dough if he put any ounce of pressure on him to tell the truth. 

Mepad- Another cold weather hc! As a Mepple device, he doesn’t really get cold! However, during their first winter together, Toilet worries that Mepad has no winter clothing!!! He buys Mepad one of those super fluffy, pink cases. Mepad does not take it off for months, until his systems start to overheat because of it. 

Toilet- I think he would be rather curious about what having limbs is like. He wouldn’t be particularly upset about his own lack of limbs, just curious!^^ He would ask Mepad about his legs, (try to) ask Mephone about his arms, and maybe make a little doodle of himself with a lot of limbs. A biblically accurate Toilet, if you will.

Blueberry- I like to think his white eyes glow a bit. He functions best in pitch-black darkness, yeah? So imagine you’re walking in the dark and two white eyes are staring at you from the depths. He would love scaring people with it, I think. 

Bot- Hanging out with everyone post-season 3 finale and even more so post-canon, they discover that they really do love videogames, similar to what they told Cabby!! They would absolutely dominate in fighting games, and would main R.O.B. in Super Smash Bros.!!! A fellow robot with a 3 letter name? Sign them UP. 

Cabby- She is endlessly fascinated by how Taco’s arms work. They just…go back in? How? Could she pull them out backwards? Both on the same side? Could she reverse them? Taco does not know either, and the two of them spend a full day together just trying to figure out how they work. Cabby gets a lot of new info about them, and Taco in general, after that :). I’m projecting but I think Cabby would be curious too.^^

Candle- Her meditation training post-canon is what keeps like half the cast from losing their minds after everything that happens. She is very very much needed after… all that. Meditation would help her too, of course, in the way that it usually does, but being so helpful would probably make her feel better than that. 

Clover- She was once blown across the entire island because someone dropped a penny on the ground. It was a particularly shiny penny, though, and the year was one her many, many lucky numbers!!

Goo- My little fella!!! Uh obviously he and Bot would make comics together. They like to draw, he likes to write, it’s perfect!!!! They could help him condense his writing down into a comic format as well!!! They could also make fanart and fanfics together!!! Goo would be a shipper I think he already ships Silver and Painty if you sit that little guy down in front of Steven Universe he will explode. 

Lifering- With everyone losing their immortality post-canon, he quickly becomes one of the most popular among the contestants. Twisted your ankle? Go see Lifering. Migraine? Go see Lifering. Ate the mushrooms that Taco very clearly told you were poisonous? Hurry to Lifering!! He’s happy to be of so much help, but gives some long and rather informative lectures on proper safety checks. 

Silver Spoon- Fills his room with candles. Particularly purple ones. And ones scented with lavender and chamomile. He’ll go on and on about how much he loves candles. Particularly purple ones scented with lavender and chamomile. No one can tell if Candle is trying to politely turn him down or really hasn’t noticed. He progressively gets more and more obvious with his candle collection and nearly sets a building on fire. 

Tea Kettle- #1 Nickloon shipper. I’m serious. Whether they get together or not, she ships it. I don’t think she’d be pushy about it, insistent that they get together if they’re interested in other people, but… we know silly Nickel, always chasing a Balloon. And if he needs a little help catching it, TK will be there in a flash!!!! She’d make them a little romantic picnic complete with hors d’oeuvres! 

The Floor- My guy The Floor still visits Mephone almost daily post-canon. I really don’t see the guy being super upset or holding a grudge over Mephone having made him. He’s pretty cool, if he does say so himself!!^^ And they’re buddies, anyways, so Floory would want to check in on him after his abusive father killed everyone and then was exploded!!!! He might even befriend 3GS while he’s at it :).

[gazorninplat]

As much as I love Disco Elysium, I think I was not prepared for Sacred and Terrible Air. Of course, I was expecting to know more about the world of Elysium as a whole, and Robert Kurvitz is a very good writer, but the thesis of the novel (and how it makes its points) flash-banged me.

Disco Elysium this is not, and it wasn’t supposed to be, but I think I can understand better now what the team at ZA/UM was getting at with this specific setting, and these specific narrative angles. Kinda messy, because it’s been a week since I finished it, but here are some things I’d like to highlight: 

1. The pedophilia. I surely wasn’t expecting this to be such a central theme of the novel, but a lot of its main points revolve around it. The most interesting use of this, as a narrative device, is how the girlfriend of Jesper basically accuses him of being a pedophile because he cannot relate to the adults around him. He’s still obsessed with a girl he met when he was 13 years old, and fetishizes a scrunchie he stole from her bag two decades ago. Yeah, I guess Jesper, well into his thirties, is still in love with a 13 year old girl. His girlfriend is almost half his age, and they started dating when she was 15 years old and a lingerie model (!). Zigi mentions how pedophilia was a bougie disease, and well… That idea went right into my thought cabinet (I call it “Bougie Babies for Sale).

Still processing it.

Now, let’s go back to the rest of the main characters. With all this in mind, a pedophilic overtone covers their interest in these four missing girls, but Jasper is the only one who acts on it, sort of. Khan remains in a sort of arrested development (he still uses a shirt he had when he was 13), foregoing normal adult relationships, and Tereesz joins the police as an investigator with the idea of still finding them some day (essentially letting these eternally prepubescent girls define his entire existence), leading him to a very dark path. I wonder if the brutality they afford to the “actual” pedophiles in the story (Vidkun Hird and the Linoleum Salesman) comes from the realization that they are not that different?

2. Obviously, though, this fetishization of the Lund sisters is also a fetishization of the past. The novel states it in the first few pages; they disappeared twenty years ago, in a time that most conservative people remember as the “good old days”. Basically their version of the American Fifties. Now, being obsessed with the past is a running theme in both SaTA and DE, but the angle here is different.

I already said it: the past is not remembered, is fetishized with an almost sexual yearning by a lot of the male characters of the book. They want to be consumed by it (and lucky them! It will) and do nothing more than serve it. It reminds me of a poem by Yamil Nardil Sadek, which, translated to the best of my ability, goes like: 

She awaits me

sitting on the bed,

wearing leather,

and armed to the teeth,

the Memory.

Yeah, that sums up Sacred and Terrible Air pretty well. Everyone is being consumed by the past, bite by bite, and enjoying it. Vidkun Hird, by the mythologized version of his tribe’s history; Sarjan Ambartsumjan, by a miniature ship model that requires constant, devoted thought or else it will disappear, the three main characters by the memory of that summer with the Lund girls. Even the Linoleum Salesman is being haunted and consumed, of sorts, by his sickness and dementia that only sometimes let him take a peek of the past. Beyond that, there are very few characters that do not spend time being followed by relentless ghosts. Literally, in the case of Zigi. Which brings me to…

3. The Pale. It was a really cool concept in Disco Elysium, and it’s an existential nightmare in Sacred and Terrible Air. It always was, really. But here it lets you take a look into it in a way that’s applicable in real life. The Pale is a metaphor for many things, but actually for a single one: A world where our current Capitalist reality facilitates both apathy and yearning for better days, often idealized in our collective pasts.

My favorite scene, one that was incredibly puzzling but so obvious in retrospect, is a beautiful speech by the ghost (?) of Ignus Nilsen to Zigi. I will just paste it here:

“I said terrible things, yes! I stood on a white horse, in a blizzard, and gave speeches. In the mountains, on the construction site… I swung my sword, with silver sunbeams on the hilt. And all around me fluttered white flags, crests of crowned horns made with silver thread, a pentagon between the prongs of the horns, the branches raised to heaven. Everyone who came here with me became happy, Zigi! Communism is powerful! Believe in Communism, it’s a burst of enthusiasm! I promise! It’s beautiful when you believe in a person, but without it…!”

“Without it, there is nothing.”

“Nothing. It was a blizzard, but it was bright, it was morning. Communism is white, it sparkles! Communism is the morning, it is a jubilation!” 

The Pale begins to recede dangerously around the entroponaut.

The fucking Pale recedes with talk of Communism! At first it might appear a little heavy handed (yeah, Communism, by itself, could save the world). But then I got into how Communism could be a solution to the antipathy and chronic nostalgia that sustain Capitalism, and then it hit me. Nilsen, a literal ghost from the past, is talking about a future that could have been. That he wanted to accomplish. That people, probably, can still achieve. The Pale is not eternal, it can be pushed back. Because the Pale seems to subsist on the past, it abhors any talk of the future. A better future. That’s how we solve things, and for a central thesis, is not bad at all.

With that being said, and because I’m just rambling here while pretending I’m working, there are also some things that I just didn’t understand, but maybe it was because of the translation. The original novel is written in a very poetic style, and some of that is still here, but I still need to untangle…

1. The Man. It is said that the day the Lund girls disappeared, they were joined by a mysterious Man that nobody seemed to remember correctly. A character even suspects that she was remembering wrong. Now, the Pale erases people and memories retroactively, so maybe it had something to do with it, but… Who was that? Is there any theory about that Man, or I just missed something? Some scenes and narrations were tough to parse for me (my primary language is not English).

2. Was Malin Lund pregnant? That flash with the fetus was sudden and weird.

3. What was the significance of the three meat piroshkis? They mention that it was unusual that the girls bought them (and if you do the math, you can realize early on that they were not planning to get back home. That purchase didn’t leave them enough money for the bus fare back), but that’s it. Were they for the Man? Also, the narration mentions that Lund girls’ picnic basket contained “the kind of things girls like to eat”, so maybe they were planning to see the boys and bring them the kind of things boys eat? I’m overthinking that? The chapter actually titled “Three Meat Piroshkis” just left me even more confused.

4. I don’t understand how Khan’s pen works at all. The one he brought to the school reunion. That was the part I re-read the most. Anyway, even with that, I loved Sacred and Terrible Air. Definitely one of the most enthralling reads I had, with or without the background of Disco Elysium. I’d still like an official translation that could potentially solve the issues I had, but for now, a Top 10 Book for me.

Go for it now.